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Preface
- University of Georgia Press
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PREFACE From his doting aunt, our son, Guthrie, four years old, has received a child's Polaroid camera.Wrapping paper strewn about him, he turns to mywife, Perrin, and says, "Mom, get with Dad. I want a picture of you to show my children when you're dead." There is a flash, Perrin laughs her tears, Guthrie yanks out the print alreadybeginning to appear , and I reach for the notebook in my pocket to write down what the littlest voice among us has said. We live many things, we remember some, and we die. That is one version of our story. But for the seeker and the writer, there may be another. This is a book about the imperatives for truth in the life of a seeker, and the sustaining ways of creation in the life of a writer. This is a book about how writers of allkinds mayhonor the filaments of wisdom spoken by friends and strangers nearby, our local prophets who need our voices to report what they have half-discovered. This is a book about the pleasures of creation as a basis for engaged life in a democratic world—our world threatened by terrible events and uncertain outcomes. In this world, the seeker and the writer find places where something has begun to be said, where greater connections may be anticipated and given voice. What is the role of myvoice, this book, and your curiosity in this process? In a series of first-person letters, essays, manifestoes, and meditations for you, I want to witness what might happen at the boundary called "what you almost know." On the far side, you might have a book, a story, a song or poem or blessing you will write. On this side, you have resonant hunches, griefs, secrets, and confusions. The path from here to there for a seeker requires courage, and for the writer what I call "tricks of beginning," those initially natural but incrementally more complex and sustaining experiments with language that simultaneously honor the voices around you and the voice within you. The act of writing marries the two. I work at a school in Oregon named for an expedition two centuries old: Lewis and Clark College. My father, the poet William Stafford , taught here before me and left a legacy of writing daily for individual discovery and social reconciliation. He was a pacifist, quiet but also fervent in his practice. My own role at this college for the past fifteen yearshas been to coordinate the Northwest Writing Institute , a zone for experimentation where we convene to make stories with children, students, adult professionals, and our elders. Many of the writing practices described in this book began as experiments by gatherings of writers there, gatherings disguised as classes called "Writing Your Culture," "Bards of Stumptown," "Voice for Your Tribe," and "Writing for the Healing of the World." In these workshops , the approach has been what this book offers: "What recent learning crowds your mind? What are your richest beginnings? Where do you want to go with those? How can you begin? And as we write, how can we help each other listen deep, begin clear, brave all, and offer our best beyond ourselves?" When the explorers Lewis and Clark crossed the continent in 1804 and 1805, they were entering a landscape they considered unknown. They went where their maps were blank. But of course the native inhabitants of these lands knew them well. In someways, this book isa version of the journals those explorers made, but with the greater local reference and democratic reliance that native people knew. I would venture with you into the wide and busyland of creation, into something like Blake's "City of Art," a place where we may celebrate rare specimens of story,lucky sayings of the odd and eloquent, cusx | Preface [54.156.48.192] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:03 GMT) toms of creators we have known, and collections of evocative language gleaned from local inhabitants of all kinds. But unlike Lewis and Clark, my purpose with this work is not a report to my president. Nothing so formal. It is, instead, an offering and an invitation to our time. I believe you and I may share the life of the seeker and the practice of the writer in a world that needs our voices now. Preface \ xi This page intentionally left blank [54.156.48.192] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:03 GMT) THE Mure; /^MON/G...