LouAnn Shepard Muhm

I can hardly believe that I’m coming down to my last couple of weeks of teaching Writing the Short Poem online for The Loft. Teaching at The Loft has been a wistful wish of mine for many, many years, but geography precluded it.  It hardly seems real that I have the opportunity now, and that my students seem satisfied, and want to work with me again. I am developing a structure for taking on private students, and will propose additional online classes to The Loft, in hopes that I can keep these connections, and make new ones. 

The ten weeks have flown by. The students’ talent, intellect, and generosity in responding to each other is really astonishing.  There have been a couple of bumps in the road, but we’ve weathered them, and I certainly learned a lot (yay–another flipping growth experience).  But the ups have far outweighed the downs, and I will go into the next session with more experience and the memory of this great class.  I feel that I’ve gotten to know these people, and I will miss them. There’s really nothing better than teaching people who want to learn.

Zooming out to a broader time period, it’s amazing for me to see how my path in poetry has developed.  If you had told me ten years ago that I would have the publications that I have, modest as they are,  I’d never have believed you.  I wouldn’t have believed that I had done readings in Grand Marais and Minneapolis, let alone New York and Great Britain, or attended workshops with poets I so admire–Jane Hirshfield, Joan Houlihan, Martha Rhodes, Dara Weir–it’s too much to fathom.  I know it’s a predictable time of the year to be enumerating blessings, and I hate being predictable, but enumerate I must.  I’ll keep it relatively professional here, and spare you the list of even-more-amazing personal blessings.  They are many.

I hope you have your own long list of blessings this year and every year.

As I wrote in my last post, I’m really thinking about what it takes to be an individual in an increasingly homogenized world.  Evidence would suggest I’m not the only one (“People say I’m a dreamer…”).  So, although I don’t live in a place that has an Occupy Wall Street protest, or that would have any impact if it did (local population around 3000), I will be striking my own small blow against our current corporate culture by doing my best to support local, independent businesses.  I already bank at a locally-owned institution, shop at a locally-owned grocery store, and frequent as many main-street businesses as I can.  This year, however, I’m going to try even harder.  Sorry, Wal-Mart–I have forsaken you.

By far my favorite local enterprise to support, however, is my fantastic local independent bookstore, Beagle Books.  Jen Geraedts and Sally Wizik Wills, who own and manage the store (as well as the equally wonderful Sister Wolf Books, open only in the summer) have done an amazing job of promoting my book and supporting me as a writer.  I am truly indebted. 

Now, for the first time, it is possible for people to buy Breaking the Glass online from Beagle Books (or from your favorite independent bookstore) through IndieBound  which is “a community-oriented movement begun by the independent bookseller members of the American Booksellers Association. It brings together booksellers, readers, indie retailers, local business alliances, and anyone else with a passionate belief that healthy local economies help communities thrive. Supporting local, indie businesses means that dollars, jobs, diversity, choice, and taxes stay local, creating strong, unique communities and happy citizens.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  As we begin the march toward our busiest consumer season, please join me in doing your best to support local independent businesses with your words and your dollars.

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P.S.  Buying Breaking the Glass directly from the publisher, Loonfeather Press, using this order form  is still a great way to get the book and support a local independent small press. However, I wanted people to have an online buying option, too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “outliers” this week.  Malcolm Gladwell had a bestseller by that title, and said about it,   “I’m interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.”

There have been several outliers in the news this week:  Steve Jobs, whose untimely death will rob us of whatever new, world-transforming technology he might have come up with; Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner, who were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; and Tomas Transtromer, who was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature, after having been criticized early in his career for being “not political enough.”

What is it that made these people, and others like them, willing to overcome their fear, their need to conform and their apathy, to do something, be something, say something?

The Occupy Wall Street protesters inspire me, as well.  Yes, some of them are not very well informed.  Yes, some of them are not dressed very professionally.  But aren’t they saying something you’d like to say?  Are they saying anything you haven’t said in your living room, away from the threat of handcuffs and billy clubs, and pepper spray?  Is it so beyond the pale to say that it’s wrong for oil companies and health insurers to have made record profits in the last three years, when those are the two areas where most Americans have felt most financially assaulted?  Shouldn’t banks and large corporations have to obey the law, and also obey the spirit of the law, not find ways to subvert and circumvent it?  Is it right that one percent of the US population holds 40% of our wealth, or that we’re not raising taxes on the wealthiest among us, even as they ask us to?

This week I encourage all of us, myself included, to connect with our inner outlier.  Whatever you do, however large or small a blow you make against group-think, and sameness, and timidity in the face of difference, make sure it is your act, and your thought, and your voice.

Quote for the week:  Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. … Stay hungry. Stay foolish.      –Steve Jobs

Don’t they?  It’s odd to me that this thing that we supposedly love, that inspires and feeds us, is so hard to make ourselves do.  What is up with that?  I suppose there’s some performance anxiety, and some inertia, and some straight-up mental and emotional laziness.  It takes a lot out of a person to create.  Or that’s what I say to myself when I’m not writing much.  When I really write (as opposed to sitting down with paper and pretending to write), it doesn’t seem like work.  When I can get into the flow, the poem seems to materialize “without my stir,” as Shakespeare might say. I think the thing is not to try to control it too much–not to be too invested in getting a good outcome, but to be willing to just try stuff and see what happens.  That is a weak spot for me.  I don’t like to commit things to paper unless I think they are going to work, to become something “Worthwhile.”   So, my goal for this week, which I am writing here in an effort to make myself accountable, is to write at least two draft poems.  I have the seed of an idea from the Ekphrasis class I just finished teaching–a poem in response to a painting.  So this week I vow to get that seed in the ground, and to find at least one other to plant.  At first I wrote “one other worth planting”, which (just to keep the plant metaphor going) would be the root of the problem, wouldn’t it?  So NO, not one “worth” planting, but just one that I have in my possession to plant.  Because, in the words of Banquo, “who can look into the seeds of time, /And say which grain will grow and which will not”?

Not sure why all of these quotes from Shakespeare’s Scottish play (bad luck to say the name) are coming to me this morning.  Perhaps my subconscious is sending me a message about ambition? Perhaps a reminder from my old buddy Will S. that (to paraphrase)  “the poem‘s the thing.”

Quote for the week:  “The scariest moment is always just before you start [writing]. After that, things can only get better.” ~~Stephen King

It’s the start of my very favorite time of year.  I love the cooler weather, the smell in the air, and the feeling of “fresh start” that’s all around.  I know some people feel that more in the spring–rebirth and all that–but I guess I’ve been forever imprinted by the school calendar.  Others leave that schedule behind as they get older, but teachers never do.  Give me a cool day, a vista of changing leaves , and a new notebook any time.

Last week I had the overwhelming pleasure of attending Concordia College’s symposium, The Role of the Artist in Society.  It was one of the most thought-provoking and inspiring things I’ve attended in a long time.  I went with artist collaborator and friend Tiffany Besonen, who had a piece in the exhibit (Dis)covering the Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces. The exhibit is an offshoot of a larger show that includes a piece of Tiffany’s work that incorporates my poetry.  We were able to spend some time with the exhibit’s curator and general force of nature, Jennifer Heath, who is one of the most generous and creative people I’ve met.  We also fleshed out the plan for our next, much more complicated, collaboration.  Very exciting!

Today, I’ll be attending the book release party for The Talking Stick, a Minnesota Literary Journal.  This is volume 20.  Hard to believe!  I became involved with The Jackpine Writers’ Bloc, which publishes the journal, many years ago.  I’ve had quite a few poems in the book over the years, and actually designed the layout for a few of the early editions.  I’m so happy to see it still going strong.  I’ll be especially proud today to be there to hear one of my best student-poets, Ashley Ziehm, read the poem she had included in the book.  She’s only the second high school student to be published there.

I’m just about to finish the class on ekphrastic poetry that I’ve been teaching at the Nemeth Art Center.  It’s been a wonderful experience.  I’m always so gratified by the generosity of the participants in classes like these.  They bring such careful attention to the work–their own and their classmates’.  My little secret is that I always learn more than they do.  This class will culminate with a reading at the Art Center on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2:30 pm.  The class participants and possibly a few of my high school students will be reading poems written in response to the artwork currently on exhibit.  Hope to see you there!

Week after next, I’ll be starting to teach Writing the Short Poem for The Loft Literary Center.  It’s an online class, and it will be very interesting to see how it all comes together.  I have a wonderful group of students, a few of whom I’ve worked with before in one capacity or another.  It will be a dynamic group!  Registration closes next week, so if you’re on the fence, you’ll have to decide soon.

Finally, this is what I’m dreaming about this morning…a little writer’s shed in the back yard.  Maybe someday.

Quote for the week: The difference between the right and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug.                  Mark Twain

I go through periods when it seems like not much is happening in my poetry life, and then I go through periods like the current one, when it seems a lot is happening.  The trick is to remember these times in the drier spells. 

On Sunday, I had a fantastic reading at the Y Steak house in Park Rapids with the lovely and talented Kathryn Kysar.  I think we both were surprised by the turnout (not huge, but adequate) and the appreciation of the audience.  A very nice event indeed.  Here I am with Jen Geraedts, manager of Beagle Books, a sponsor of the event (and a poet in her own right) and Kate Kysar (l to r).

Yesterday, I began teaching a class on Ekphrasis (poetry inspired by art) at the Nemeth Art Center with a fantastic group of students, and in just a few weeks I begin teaching Writing the Short Poem online for the Loft.  And the regular school year is starting, too.  Teaching, teaching, teaching!  Good thing I love it.

In other news, my good friend and collaborator Tiffany Besonen and I will be attending  an event at Concordia College in a couple of weeks entitled :   2011 Faith, Reason and World Affairs Symposium , “The Role of the Artist in Society: Inspiration, Issues, Impact.”  We will be meeting with Jennifer Heath, who curates The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces, a traveling art exhibition on tour since 2008 which includes our collaboration, “i am water,” a mixed-media collage block-printed with a fragment of one of my poems.  We will attend the gallery talk, and also many of the sessions the next day exploring the role of the artist in society.  Should be very interesting.

Tiffany is also in the process of submitting a grant proposal to The Minnesota Center for Book Arts for a collaboration in which I will write in response to some of her new work, and the poems and images then will be translated into larger broadsides (art/poetry posters, kind of).  Cross your fingers for us!

Finally, a project that has been on the back burner, but still simmering, for a couple of years is a photo/poetry collaboration with my (new) husband and photographer extraordinaire, Steve Peterson.  I won’t say too much about it except to say that it would focus on a much-traveled and much-loved route between our two homes, and would aspire to capture the route’s beauty before the road is modernized too much.  We’ve recently gotten some encouraging interest and feedback, and hope to move this closer to the front of the stove.

Busy times!

Quote for the week: Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          — Rumi

I’m really looking forward to my reading THIS Sunday, August 28, with Kate Kysar at the Y Steak House, Park Rapids.  Kate and I met years ago while she was living in Bemidji.  Her first book was published by Loonfeather Press, as was mine.  She’s now gone on to have a second book published just this year, the excellent Pretend the World (Holy Cow! Press).  It’s kind of interesting that our careers are in some ways parallel (though hers more illustrious), with mine a few years behind hers.  It did make me feel better about my own progress that there were several years between her first book and her second.  I’m not too behind yet!  Poetry for me is such a long, slow process of observation, thought, and eventual expression.  I envy the people who can just crank ‘em out,  but I have to honor my own process, too.  Patience is a virtue, right?

If you are interested in attending the Y Steak House event, see my schedule page for details.

Quote for the week:  A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. ~Herm Albright

Thanks to Ashley Ziehm for the quote.