Tag Archives: Mark Twain House

Found poetry: Advice to a writer

Posted on August 23, 2013 | 2 comments

The other book I purchased from the gift shop at the Mark Twain House was also written by a New England author who had taken part in one of the wonderful writing workshops the museum sponsors. I’m working my way through the book very slowly, saving it for those days when I sit down to work and struggle to find something coherent to write.

Advice to a Writer

you should not walk
around with your heart
hanging open — there’s too much
danger out there
just find a way to make your heart
safe for opening slowly
chamber by chamber
so you can get back
to those in-the-moment
moments

— Nancy Slonim Aronie in Writing from the Heart: Tapping the Power of Your Inner Voice, p. 33 (Hyperion 1998)

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Found poetry: Judy

Posted on August 7, 2013 | 2 comments

While trolling the gift shop at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, earlier this summer, I found a table of books marked down to half price. Exercising nearly superhuman restraint, I only bought two titles, one of which was The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant.  Near the end of the book, the following passage jumped out at me as something that might make a fair poem. Let me know what you think…

When Judy returned to the empty
house, she clapped her hands
at the pleasure of having it all

to herself again. She moved
her clothes back upstairs to the high
ceilings and windows she’d missed

all summer, and then strolled through the quiet
rooms, stopping in the library, where she emptied
the dregs of the Judge’s sherry into a crystal glass, put up

her feet, and watched the sunset
turn the harbor into a pink punch
bowl. The great clock ticked while

the gulls became black apostrophes
against the line of one endless lavender
cloud that stretched to the horizon.

– Anita Diamant, The Last Days of Dogtown, pp. 248-9 (2006 trade paper edition, Scribner 2005)

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