These days I help to promote books by reviewing them for various publications including More Living, The Vancouver Sun, Story Circle Book Reviews and Synergy. To read some of my reviews, visit www.storycirclebookreviews.org. Just click on my name, Mary Ann Moore, and from there you will find a delightful list of books to entice you. You can also visit www.synergymag.com and see my reviews by entering my name: Mary Ann Moore. Among them are Trauma Farm by Brian Brett; River of Awareness by Stephen Sims; Narrative Medicine by Lewis Mehl-Madrona; Life is a Verb by Patti Digh; and Havens in a Hectic World by Star Weiss.
Here are a couple of reviews of books I have enjoyed recently (posted as different versions at www.storycirclebookreviews.org).
By Kim Rosen (Hay House 2009)
Kim Rosen is a poet and the "wholeness" she has experienced has not come from writing poetry or even reading it, but rather from speaking poems aloud and learning them by heart. Learning by heart changes you biologically with a poem's rhythm and breath she says.
Saved by a Poem is a trade paperback so it's bendable and I have made many underlinings and margin notes. I would love it to be a workbook size so I can make more notes and further exclamations of glee as I read and practice what Rosen is teaching. This is a book for everyone to enjoy as writers, teachers, hospice volunteers and anyone wanting that reconnection to self that, I think, is the yearning of all of us engrossed in increasingly busy lives.
As Rosen's book merges "the power of the word with the language of the soul," she describes "soul" in her prologue. She asks the word "to stand for all that lives in us beyond the socialized, survival-oriented self. I ask it to include the many realms of the 'inner' world: the psychological self with its memories, wounds, imagining, and feeling; the oceanic movements of the emotions; the archetypal themes, forces, and elements of the collective unconscious that we share with all humanity; and the Self that is pure, formless, awake, eternal presence."
Wow. You can see Rosen's scope is far-reaching and beyond the popular question of poetry, but what does it mean? Her approach to poetry is not about trying to "understand" a poem. As Rosen put its, "Dare to not understand, to lose your grip on making sense of the words. Let the images, like musical notes, pour over you."
Rosen was inspired by non-fiction author and poet David Whyte who has memorized hundreds of poems. Now Rosen has learned well over a hundred as well although she says she doesn't have a good memory. So, how does she do it?
I've experienced Rosen's teaching and inspiring example at workshops she offers and learned my own poem by heart by repeating the first lines of it over and over to a poet companion while walking around a retreat centre. I repeated the lines as the microphone was passed around the circle. I chased Rosen around the room in an improvised comedy sketch, prompted by her to recite my poem, breathlessly, or rather, with breath.
In Saved by a Poem, Rosen writes of "learning by heart" as "a partnership, not a conquest" as it is about "entering into a relationship with a poem." She approaches memory through what she calls "the Four Chambers of Memory", each chamber requiring a deeper commitment. You can look at a poem and say the lines while you're stopped in traffic, speak it out loud as you're falling asleep or before getting out of bed, or remember lines of it as you're taking a walk in nature. You can speak it in the shower or sing it to the trees or along with the music playing on the car radio. "The most important practice for rooting your poem in the Third Chamber is speaking it to other people," Rosen says.
In the Fourth Chamber, as Rosen describes it, "the poem starts singing to you."At this point, you have a new relationship with the poem and you can share it with others.
As for forgetting, Rosen deals with that too. She calls it "the gift of forgetting". There's a shyness, a vulnerability, a silence, an undefended exposure (if this happens in public), all of which become the gifts in those moments of communion and truth.
Each chapter offers Rosen's personal story and relationship to poetry learned by heart and includes the "medicine of poetry"; "choosing a poem", "the anatomy of a poem", "undressing your voice". The poems chosen by Rosen, in most cases, reflect the theme of the chapter. At the end of the book, several practices help to deepen a reader's poetry possibilities. And she includes a list of her 50 favourite poems so you can get started learning poems by heart.
Rosen brings all sorts of training, many gifts and a unique approach to her soulful work. Her book brings poetry into our everyday experience and offers us further ways, in an era of ever advancing technology, to connect to one another heart to heart. Perhaps the primary gift of developing a relationship with a poem is hearing your own voice, finding refuge in a poem, and as Rosen expresses it, "allowing the poem to carry you into yourself, evoking feelings, reflections, and new experiences of the world."
The book comes with a CD of poems recited by well-known spiritual teachers who discuss what the particular poem means to them. Among them are Cheryl Richardson, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Geneen Roth, Joan Borysenko and Andrew Harvey. The music of Jami Sieber adds another layer to the poetry recited by Rosen and other poets including the late Stanley Kunitz.
Try it yourself. Read a poem aloud. Share it with someone else. "As you speak the words aloud, you can change the world around you with poetry's medicine - dissolving lines of separation, fostering intimacy and truthfulness, and waking the heart."
Kim Rosen, MFA, is a spoken-word artist, a teacher of self-inquiry, and an award-winning poet. She has given poetry concerts, lectures, and workshops in venues from cathedrals to juvenile lockdown facilities. She has been on the faculty of Wisdom University, the Omega Institute and Kripalu. Her website is www.kimrosen.net.
By Jill Jepson (Celestial Arts 2008)
As writing is my spiritual practice, I was drawn to the title of Jill Jepson's book. She approaches writing through four gateways to the sacred: those of the mystic, the monk, the shaman, and the warrior. It's a book full of writing ideas as well as many affirmations for the writing life.
The mystic, by example, helps us to "develop our own unique perspective." The monk teaches us to foster silence and solitude as well as the "importance of community in the writing life." The shaman teaches writers to "journey in the realm of memory, imagination, myth and dream and how to draw energy from our relationship with the natural world." Lest you feel the need for what you consider to be down-to-earth practical advice, the warrior's training teaches and inspires "focus, discipline, and strategic skill."
Jepson begins the book saying: "If you are reading this book, you have already heard the call." That simple sentence is an honouring of the life we writers have chosen or more accurately perhaps, the life that has chosen us. I sat awhile with that one.
One of the "sacred tools" early on in the book is "Offering Your Story." This means offering our story to a particular person or to the world and to keep our personal gift of writing in mind as we write. When our story is finished, Jepson suggests we infuse it with love, light a candle and "hold the story up toward the sky or close to your heart." As Jepson writes: "Whatever you can do to ritualize your offering will confirm that you are bestowing a gift that is not only priceless, but unique in all the world."
Each chapter offers philosophies and beliefs central to the four gateways and paths and is filled with exercises, activities and prompts. There is so much that is affirming and inspiring here with quotes from writers and practices from indigenous people. Jepson has invented many "sacred tools" as influenced by her decades of studying spiritual traditions all over the world. I appreciate the fact she is sharing her knowledge in this way.
Each pathway offers sage advice and there are numerous practices to use on your own or with your writing circle. There will probably be one path that resonates with each reader more than another. For me, it was the shaman. It is the shaman that teaches us to design a safe haven for our writing and to set the stage for our writing with the practice of ritual.
Jepson writes, ". . . the opportunity to write is a gift that comes with great responsibility." I really appreciate her honouring of writing and how we have the task of "serving the living and non-living world around us . . . "to give them voice."
Jill Jepson is a writer, traveler, linguistic anthropologist, and college professor with degrees in Asian studies, psychology, linguistics, and writing. She offers spiritual and transformational coaching, workshops and classes through her company, Writing the Whirlwind LLC (www.writingthewhirlwind.net). Jepson lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband, John Beyer, and three cats.