Saying What Needs to be Said (This is the Work – Vol. 1, No. 3)

Here are few things I’m sharing this month:

1. New Blog:

• A Carpenter bee in a tender, quiet way asked me why I waited to become a father: The Carpenter Bee

2. Question I’m living with:

•  “What am I not saying that needs to be said?” – Jerry Colonna

3. Quote I’m considering:

• “My own belief is that one regards oneself, if one is a serious writer, as an instrument for experiencing. Life – all of it – flows through this instrument and is distilled through it into works of art. How one lives as a private person is intimately bound into the work. And at some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked.” – May Sarton (Journal of a Solitude, 1973) 

4. Poem I’m pondering:

Below is an excerpt from the poem “Foreday in the Morning” by Jericho Brown. It is from his collection of poems titled “The Tradition”. You can read the full poem here.

These words: I love my mother. I love black women

Who plant flowers as sheepish as their sons. By the time the blooms

Unfurl themselves for a few hours of light, the women who tend them

Are already at work. Blue. I’ll never know who started the lie that we

       are lazy.

But I’d love to wake that bastard up

At foreday in the morning, toss him in a truck, and drive him under

      God

Past every bus stop in America to see all those black folk

Waiting to go work for whatever they want. 

5. Something inspiring:

• Dolly Parton documentary on Netflix and her ability to be someone to so many from so many backgrounds. Here’s my favorite Dolly song: Mule Skinner Blues (1971) 

If you’re reading this newsletter for the first time, you can read previous issues here and subscribe here.

Thanks so much. And, have a great day! – shawn