Monthly Archives September 2010

Conquering Writer’s Block

I went through a couple of ideas for a Ruminate blog post, but neither of them went anywhere. It’s been an odd month or so of fires, remembering September 11, and juggling kids’ new schedules. I thought for sure I could come with something, but I could only get the first paragraph written of a post. When in doubt about what to write, there’s always the topic of not knowing what to write. This got me thinking about three tips I use for conquering writer’s block.

Poems from England

Hello, dear Ruminate readers,

By the time this blog is posted, I will be in jolly old England, visiting my soon-to-be-in-laws for a couple of weeks and family weddings. In honor of this, I wanted to share some poems by British authors. With the large wealth of modern American poets, it can sometimes be difficult to explore the writers beyond our shores. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

Poetry and Redemption

The Gnostic seeks to liberate spirit from matter; the poet works in, and celebrates, the union of the two. This relationship is true not only of explicitly or implicitly Christian poetry but of all poetry worthy to be called such, since all worthwhile poetry connects thought or feeling to the material world. Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility,” Eliot’s “objective correlative,” Bly’s “deep image”: all theories of poetry are really theories of how body meets spirit in the written and/or spoken word. Poetry is permanently at war with Gnosticism in all its varieties.

Anne Pageau & Give Studios: Graphic Design with Soul