Light Begins
— I’ve been thinking a lot about light lately as we dip down into a new season. The world has always had its heavinesses, but there is also a through-line of light. A book I read ages ago came into my mind, and as luck would have it, it’s on the shelf of my personal library. Light Light by Julie Joosten came out in 2013 and I was impressed with it then. Sometimes I think we’re so keen on what’s coming out now, that we forget to talk about the books that have stayed with us. But it’s hard to keep up with it all, and it’s good to remember also that we’re not consumers but lovers of literature.
— So a poem from Light Light:
light-embroidered
Sometimes I have the fragment of a memory that’s yours.
On a kitchen table a flower stem extends perfectly along an angle of
light until the light and stem disappear in a vase.
I believe for a second that light begins in a vase on a table in a
kitchen.
And unfolds as day.
— Another poem that hit me this week was from Rolf Jacobsen’s The Roads Have Come to an End Now:
But We Live —
— But we live
through supermarkets and racks full of cheese, and we live
under the vapor trails of jets in the golden month of May
and in smoke-dimmed cities,
and we live with coughing carburetors and slamming car doors.
We live
through the TV-evening in our golden century,
on asphalt, behind tabloids and at gas stations.
We live
as statistics and as registration numbers in election years.
We live with a flower in the window,
in spite of everything we live under
hydrogen bombs the threats
of nuclear extermination, sleep —
less we live
side by side with the hungry who
die by the millions, live
with a weariness to our thoughts, live
still, live
magically inexplicably live,
live
on a star.
(translated by Robert Hedin)
— I feel like the poem is still entirely true and if we just changed a few details, it could be now. There are still threats, there are still the hungry, people dying in horrific numbers. And it is still inexplicable that we live on a star, and others on that same star don’t go on living. I wonder, how would you re-write this poem for today?
— It’s a bit amazing that somehow my book is still being yapped about in Lit World. Thanks to All Lit Up for this Q&A with me and Margaret Macpherson, whose book Tilting Towards Joy is wonderful. An excerpt:
MARGARET: This question is harder, I think. Given the current climate of insta-best sellers and diminishing returns for the small presses, with authors shouldering more and more of the marketing and promotional tasks, what do you see for the future of your work? You have a base of readers and people (including me) who are excited by your vision and its quiet execution, but how will you grow readership in a prize culture that often ignores or trivializes the meditative, the still small voice?
SHAWNA: Margaret, I feel like you’re in my head with these questions. I was just thinking about how I’m probably about as popular as I’ll ever be. As someone who has been on social media since the beginning and who avidly follows the latest in book publishing, I can see what it would take to maybe be more well-known. But I’m not interested in those things. And I guess those books that I most love are often the lesser known, the unsung, the quirky beautiful weird ones. That’s not bad company to be in. Of course, it doesn’t pay the bills. So, we’re always going to be giving something up to write or create something outside the mainstream. We’re always going to have to struggle to some extent. I have to be okay with that. Very few writers these days can operate without at least a part-time job. Why should I be any different?
It’s not that I wouldn’t like a greater readership. I’ve always hoped that the right book finds the right reader. So, I do try and put myself out there because I owe it to my work to give it a chance. I think I’ve always sold my books one by one, winning over one heart at a time. They’re not for everyone but what book is?
— I’m on holiday as of Monday, grateful for a LWOP, even if I will have to work extra to make up for it later. Maybe that too is some secret hidden gift. I mean, I believe it must be.
— Rumi (tr. Barks):
“The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the question,
nor is it bought with going to amazing places.
Until you’ve kept your eyes
and your wanting still for fit years,
you don’t begin to cross over from confusion.”
“Light again, and the one who brings light!
change the way you live!”
