“Political” poetry by men remains stranded…the enemy is always outside the self, the struggle somewhere else. –Adrienne Rich

Open the body to grief, turning your face to your own life, absorbing the failures your parents and your country have suffered. –Robert Bly

The thing to do is grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear. –Zora Neale Hurston

One of the most subversive things you can do is spend as much time as possible nurturing what is not machine-like. –Austin Kleon

Hard times are coming when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom–poets, visionaries–realists of a larger reality. –Ursula K. LeGuin

Be joyful
though you have considered all the options.
–Wendell Berry

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
–Theodore Roethke

{An accidental collection winnowed out of my journal from the last two months that feels like a reliable pattern to follow for the next two months.}

I just recently wrote about our approach to poetry study and memorization in our homeschool. But I use similar tactics as a part of my own poetry practice. Wide exposure and deep dives.

Copywork slows reading way down. While you might be tempted to flip through a collection and read with scattered attention, writing by hand creates the conditions for paying attention. Formal matters, like line breaks and punctuation, are foregrounded.

This month I began a new copywork project. I am copying by hand all of Ursula K. LeGuin’s most recent book of poems called So Far So Good.

Each morning I begin this work while the sky is dark, the house is quiet, and the coffee is hot. It’s an easy way to approach the page and begin to turn my attention to writing. Her poems are fine companions and teachers.

If you’d like to hear more about how copywork might inform your own process, Ann Kroeker produced an excellent podcast on the topic.

To see all the posts in the series Listening to My Life :: Homeschooling an MFA in Poetry, click here.