"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 ‘power’

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

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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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Daily Prompt Love <3 Privilege

24 April 2019 

Make art about privilege, about those who have it, about the blindness of privilege, about those who abuse it, or about ways to use it to help others. 

privilege

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2019 Prompts, Art, Artists, Creativity, fiction, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, prompts, Writing, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Love <3 Talisman

7 February 2019

The word “Talisman,” derived from the Greek verb “teleo,” means, primarily, to accomplish, or bring into effect. A Talisman is an object believed to confer on its bearer power or protection. 

Make art about a talisman.

nazar-amulet-65015_640 

 

Category:

2019 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Love <3 Hear Me Now?

6 December 2017

Make art about the roar, a time you roared, or wanted to roar, but didn’t. Make art about the need to roar, about where you carry that need to roar in the body.  Write the roar. 

roar

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

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Monday Must Read <3 Poets Against the War, Sam Hamill

Poets Against the War: The Movement, The Anthology

Led by poet Sam Hamill, February 12, 2003 became a day of Poetry Against the War conducted as a reading at the White House gates in addition to over 160 public readings in many different countries and almost all of the 50 states. Since then, over 9,000 poets have joined this grassroots peace movement by submitting poems and statements to http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org, registering their opposition to the Bush administration’s headlong plunge toward war in Iraq. Poets Against the War features a selection of the best poems that were submitted to the website. Contributors include: Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, Robert Bly, Marilyn Hacker, Grace Schulman, Shirley Kaufman, Wanda Coleman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hayden Carruth, Jane Hirshfield, Tess Gallagher, Sandra Cisneros, former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and many others.

Buy This Beautiful Necessary Book   

Poets Against The War Website

More Online About Poets Against the War

The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/poets-against-war/

In These Times: http://inthesetimes.com/article/49/poets_against_the_war

Voices in Education: http://voiceseducation.org/content/poets-against-war

Voices in Wartime Documentary (12 Minute Preview; Full documentary available):  http://voiceseducation.org/voices-wartime-12-minute-preview

Excerpts From Voice in Wartime

Wonderful Reading by Sam Hamill  

Write on, y’all! 

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, Creativity, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Daily Prompt Love x 2 <3 Subversive and Fearless

21 March 2017

Make art about Love as subversive.

Love subversive Erica Jong

 

22 March 2017

Make art about fearlessness. 

tobias wolff fearlessness

Category:

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

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Daily Prompt :-) What We Can’t Know

Happy National Poetry Month! A beautiful poem and a prompt!

to the sea

BY ARACELIS GIRMAY

 

You who cannot hear or cannot know
the terrible intricacies of our species, our minds,
the extent to which we have done
what we have done, & yet the depth to which
we have loved
what we have
loved —
the hillside
at dawn, dark eyes
outlined with the dark
sentences of kohl,
the fūl we shared
beneath the lime tree at the general’s house
after visiting Goitom in prison for trying to leave
the country (the first time),
the apricot color of camels racing
on the floor of the world
as the fires blazed in celebration of Independence.
How dare I move into the dark space of your body
carrying my dreams, without an invitation, my dreams
wandering in ellipses, pet goats or chickens
devouring your yard & shirts.
Sea, my oblivious afterworld,
grant us entry, please, when we knock,
but do not keep us there, deliver
our flowers & himbasha bread.
Though we can’t imagine, now, what
our dead might need,
& above all can’t imagine it is over
& that they are, in fact, askless, are
needless, in fact, still hold somewhere
the smell of coffee smoking
in the house, please,
the memory of joy
fluttering like a curtain in an open window
somewhere inside the brain’s secret luster
where a woman, hands red with henna,
beats the carpet clean with the stick of a broom
& the children, in the distance, choose stones
for the competition of stones, & the summer
wears a crown of beles in her green hair & the tigadelti’s
white teeth & the beautiful bones of Massawa,
the gaping eyes & mouths of its arches
worn clean by the sea, your breath & your salt.
                                             Please, you,
being water too,
find a way into the air & then
the river & the spring
so that your waters can wash the elders,
with the medicine of the dreaming of their children,
cold & clean.

 

Make art about water, about being water.

water watercolor

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, Nature, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt :-) What You Really Want

Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poem 🙂 

What Do Women Want?

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it   
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store   
with all those keys glittering in the window,   
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old   
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers   
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,   
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.   
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.   
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you   
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment   
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body   
to carry me into this world, through   
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,   
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,   
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
Make art about what you really want. 
woman red dress

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, 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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My New Year’s Wish For You <3 My Hope For Us All

There is an old story of a bear who goes into her den to dream the world into being during the winter. She dreams of deer, and pine, of clear water, sweet berries, and buffalo. She creates the world anew, each being, entire ecosystems, during the course of each winter, with her dreams. When she emerges into the green of spring, trailed by her cubs, she celebrates and is celebrated by all the creatures of the earth.

Centuries ago Aristotle said, “The soul cannot think without pictures. The reasoning mind thinks in the form of images… As the mind determines the objects it should pursue or avoid in terms of these images, even in the absence of sensation, it is stimulated to action when occupied with them.”

More recently, Denis Watley, a noted psychologist, brought attention again to this idea through The Secret.

We too can dream our world into being.

Visualization is similar to daydreaming. In both processes you create mental images; the difference between visualization and daydreaming is intention. Daydreaming allows your mind to wander, but when you visualize and focus on something specific, you are putting intention, all your beautiful power as a sacred soul, behind it.

It is the intention that creates the energy that creates the attraction. The attraction starts the action that produces the manifestation.

Ancient cultures understood this well. The bear, with its ability to seemingly die in winter and remerge in spring with new life, has long symbolized transformation, and the transformative power of dreams. Understanding the bear’s gifts, we have looked to this creature as teacher and guide and healer. These connections held true for ancient cultures around the world – anywhere people and bears lived together.

My New Year’s wish for all of you is that you come to know how beautiful and sacred and powerful you truly are, how powerful your dreams, and that in this coming year, you dream your perfect spring into being, that we all do. May 2016, for everyone, be filled with peace, and joy, and Love–always always Love ❤

xo

Mary

bear dream

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, Love

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