Flame and Shadow: A Live Tweetspeak Poetry Party with Sara Teasdale, Part 1

In her lifetime, poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was popular with the public and critics alike. Her third poetry collection, Rivers to the Sea (1915) was a bestseller; her fourth, Love Songs (1917), won what eventually was named the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her final collection, Strange Victory (1933), was published after her death and was well-received by critics. 

Her poetry gradually fell out of critical favor. I read her poems in English literature textbooks in high school and college, but her work was fast disappearing by the 1980s. (Critics and scholars often get suspicious if something is popular with the public.) Recently, her work has begun to make something of a comeback, and rightfully so. 

And just in time for a live Tweetspeak Twitter party, but without Twitter. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies”

One of my responsibilities at The High Calling is serving as Twitter editor, and at the rertreat I livetweeted the speakers. If you’ve ever livetweeted before, and particularly when a speech or discussion runs an hour or more, you know you have to pay close attention to the speaker’s words. Livetweeting is not a verbatim transcription, but it’s close. (If you’re interested, you can read the entire retreat Twitter stream – the hashtag is #hcretreat.)

At the November High Calling retreat at Laity Lodge in the hill country of Texas, one of the speakers was Marilyn McEntyre, professor of Medical Humanities at the University of California (UC)  – Davis and the Joint Medical Program of UC-Berkeley and UC-San Francisco. The author of five books of poems and books on poetry, how to read a text, reading, and teaching literature and medicine, she was there to talk with us about how to be a steward of words.

Words need stewards? Yes, indeed they do, McEntyre said. Language is a gift, a treasure, and we hold it in trust.

I livetweeted both of McEntyre’s presentations. In a sense, I was channeling what she was saying. I was so drawn in that at the first break I downloaded to my Kindle the book she was drawing upon – Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. I finished reading it before the end of the retreat.

It’s a wonderful book, published in 2009 and based on lecutes she gave at Princeton Theological Seminary. McEntyre cares deeply about language and words, and how we misuse both. She particularly faults the language of marketing and the language of public discourse for confusing, disguising intent, and misappropriating language for their own ends. She also discusses how words fall into disuse, left forgotten in old novels and essays, their meanings obscure.

But instead of a book of complain and expose, she instead offers twelve strategies for how to reclaim words and language, how to be good stewards of words. Each strategy has its own chapter.

Love words. Tell the truth. Don’t tolerate lies. Read well. Stay in conversation. Share stories. Love the long sentence (a favorite chapter – with suggestions on how to read Faulkner). Practice poetry. Attend to translation. Play. Pray. Cherish silence.

Marilyn McEntyre

At the retreat, we had the benefit of engaging in a series of exercises that provided examples of what McEntyre means when she says we are to be stewards of words. Many of them centered on poetry, suggesting that the practice of poetry may be more practical than most people think.

If I have a quibble with her presentations and the book, it is a minor one – it’s too easy these days to criticize how corporations and government abuse language (and they do). And it’s too easy to overlook some of the worst abusers of language – like universities, speech codes designed to ensure no one is offended by anyone saying anything, the news media, and the education establishment. (When I spent time as the communications director for an urban school district, I learned very early to be immediately suspicious of anyone who promoted themselves or their agendas by talking about “it’s for the good of the children.” That was a code phrase – and it meant that what was being said really had nothing to do with the good of the children.)

My minor complaint aside, the book is full of value, not only for writers and speakers but also for anyone who cares about language. It’s especially important for writers, though, and as I looked around the room at the retreat, I saw writers furiously taking notes.

And it was a double delight to hear McEntyre speak in a quiet voice full of passion for her subject, and follow with reading Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.

Photograph by Darren Lewis via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

Just as he was

Let us go to the other side

he said, 

                      just as he was

A fishing boat would take him

and them across 

                      just as he was

They took him along

to the other side 

                      just as he was

black clouds thickening

above their heads 

                      alone, he slept

terrified as the boat titled

they woke him 

                      just as he was

he spoke, the wind, the waves

died 

                      just as he was

                      completely calm

On Thursday, Nov. 20 at The High Calling Retreat at Laity Lodge in Texas, Laura Boggess used Mark 4:35-39 as the basis for a Lectio Divina (sacred reading).  I took two notes: “just as he was” and “completely calm.” Laura is the author of Playdates with God: Having a Childlike Faith in a Grownup World (2014).

Photograph by Ken Kistler via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

An Element of the Sacred

What strikes any visitor to Laity Lodge is first, the remoteness, and second, the beauty of the landscape.

How remote? Cell phones don’t work. How beautiful? The photograph above was taken while I was standing on the balcony of the main lodge building, early on Sunday morning. For three mornings straight, I got up at five, showered and dressed, walked to lodge and scrounged for coffee.

And then I inhaled the quiet, and the solitude. I’d write some. I’d watch the sun rise over the bluff – a magnificent thing to see.

I was there for the online staff retreat for The High Calling. We came from all over the United States and even from Australia. We arrived on Thursday in San Antonio, congregated in Kerrville (about an hour or so west of San Antonio), had dinner in Hunt, Texas, a few miles out of Kerrville, and then went on to Laity Lodge.

And it’s still reachable only by driving through a river for about four blocks. Like I said, it’s remote.

It’s also something else. The word, I believe, is sacred, but not because of anything spiritual that attaches to the landscape but rather what happens within that landscape.

Worship. Reflection. Teaching. Writing. Art. Music.

And for us with The High Calling, meetings and discussions and planning. Those, too, had an element of the sacred about them.

For most of the weekend, we joined with a group from Westlake Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, there for their retreat. Together we heard a series of four messages from Robert Mulholland, a retired professor from Asbury Theological Seminary, and music from Jeff Johnson. And on behalf of The High Calling, I livetweeted Mulholland’s talks, except for the Eucharist service on Sunday.

I’ve already written a little bit about what I heard from Mulholland. There’s more, much more. His words prompted me to ask a question that I’m still answering: how many of my own career conflicts have been part of God conforming me to Christlikeness?

All of them, I suspect.

On Saturday afternoon, a group of us hiked the Circle Bluff Trail, which ends atop the bluff with a vista stretching for miles. I had hiked this trail two years ago. Once we reached the top, Marcus Goodyear, our tour guide and editor of The High Calling, asked who wanted to continue on. Two the group returned; four of us went on with Marcus. “Continuing on” included wading the Frio River, making our way to the Fencepost Trail, and then a descent into Box Canyon.

The descent included the use of ropes. But it was relatively short and not very strenuous.

If you were a mountain goat.

I survived just fine.

So we listened and talked, presented and pondered. We learned. We shared and encouraged. We sat quietly and we laughed. We walked and hiked and waded.

We spent some time at Laity Lodge. Good time.

Sacred time.

The stone of canyon walls

rests in stacks, layers in color:

tan, gray, blue-gray; limed

with the waters, living waters

pouring in their trickles, flowing

down to the river,

down to the sea,

to launch a thousand ships.