"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Posts tagged ‘Language’

Monday Must Read! The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall

A must-read for any writer or storyteller, I think. 

Buy It Here! 

storytelling

A New York Times Editor’s Choice
 
A Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Finalist
“A jaunty, insightful new book . . . [that] draws from disparate corners of history and science to celebrate our compulsion to storify everything around us.”
—New York Times

Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. Now Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems–just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival. Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal and explains how stories can change the world for the better. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.

“This is a quite wonderful book. It grips the reader with both stories and stories about the telling of stories, then pulls it all together to explain why storytelling is a fundamental human instinct.”
–Edward O. Wilson

“Charms with anecdotes and examples . . . we have not left nor should we ever leave Neverland.”–Cleveland Plain Dealer

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, healing, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, peace, poetry, Writing

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Sick for a Week Prompt Catch-Up! 7 New Prompts!

21 October 2017

Make art about feeling like you can’t speak, about not saying things you need to say, about self-silencing.

silenced

22 October 2017

Make art about being new to language, a child learning language.

baby language

23 October 2017

Make art about the first naming of things.

naming

24 October 2017

Make art about a fever.

fever

25 October 2017

Make art about long sleep.

sleep dreams

26 October 2017

Make art about seeing the web.

matrix

27 October 2017

Make art about seeing the doctor.

doctor

Category:

2017 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Happy National Poetry Month! <3 The Language Issue by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

Another favorite poem, and poet. 

The Language Issue
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
translated by Paul Muldoon

I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put
an infant

in a basket of intertwined
iris leaves,
its underside proofed
with bitumen and pitch,

then set the whole thing down amidst
the sedge
and bulrushes by the edge
of a river

only to have it borne hither and thither,
not knowing where it might end up;
in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh’s daughter.

leaf boat

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Daily Prompt Catch-Up!

21 May 2016

Road trip to visit family today in northern Virginia, backroads and crossroads 🙂

Make art about intersections.

intersection

22 May 2016

Spent this precious day with my grandson and his beautiful mama 🙂 my daughter. Max, my grandperson 🙂 I call him Noquisi, which means Star 🙂 is already very vocal LOL a family trait 😀 I kept thinking about how, right now, at just over a month old, he has the physical capacity for learning every language on the planet. I kept listening to his wildly varied baby sounds, and thinking about how I wish we could retain—and fulfill–that potential, wishing we could all—all people—speak to and universally understand each other.

Make art about the power of language.
lia and max talking

 

23 May 2016

I stopped on the way home yesterday, caught by an intriguing historical sign, marking The Church of the Blind Preacher.

Make art inspired by a historical marker, or by an intriguing historical character.
14598495681_54c5d7d227_b

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt :-) Poetry and Power

Happy National Poetry Month! 

Celebrating by posting a poem a day, anddddd, if I can, writing a poem a day 🙂 

So today’s poem (one of my favorites!) is also our

Daily Prompt 🙂 

Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

Make art about power. 

adrienne rich quote

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, nonfiction, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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