We can no longer deny the destiny that is ours by becoming women who wait—waiting to love, waiting to speak, waiting to act. –Terry Tempest Williams What if your mother, whom you have always been very close to, dies too young after a long struggle with cancer. (She is 52.  You are 34.) What if, as she is dying, she tells you--her "dearest friend"--that she wants you to have her journals. What if, after you have honored her wishes by opening the first of the hardcover Read more [...]

Dogma doesn't hold me. Wildness does. – Terry Tempest Williams Post-Election 2012 seems like a fine time to reflect for a moment on an author who has changed my life: Terry Tempest Williams. I first read Refuge, An Unnatural History of Family and Place (New York: Pantheon Books/Random House), in 1991, when it was published, a pioneering piece of creative nonfiction prose and environmental thought. I have reread it at least a dozen times since, most recently this week. Refuge intertwines Read more [...]

Here is one of the places I go in my imagination when the world is too much with me (election, hurricane, climate change. . .). If you look closely at the photo, you'll see the beginning of Obstruction Point Road, just past the small sign. It's one of the almost absurdly civilized ways to get pretty far into the heart of the Olympic Mountains with a vehicle. If you were snapping this photo, you would already have driven from Port Angeles, Washington, to Hurricane Ridge, 18 miles and 4,300-feet Read more [...]

Henry David Thoreau famously pronounced, in his essay about walking/living, ". . . in wildness is the preservation of the world." Less elegantly, but more Alison-ly, maybe this is one contemporary takeaway: Too much tamed-ness snuffs out the creative spark that leads to full-on living, or, get out under some sky lest you merge with your sofa and forget how to walk through weather (I know, I know, that's explaining one metaphor with another). Nigel Peake's book In the Wilds (Princeton Read more [...]

Sometimes inspiration doesn't feel like inspiration. Sometimes it feels more like a kick in the gut. This week, the destruction of a hillside of trees that is as familiar to me as the walls of my studio provoked the sort of pause that, when I'm lucky, leads to a poem or a bit of prose. I was on my way to an appointment, and I really didn't have any time to spare, but I'd thrown my camera into the backseat (something I'm trying to make a habit). The morning sun was lighting up Read more [...]

My foragings last week returned me to a book and a poet that were essential to me back when I knew even less about everything than I do now: The Magician's Feast Letters by Diane Wakoski. I got to thinking about the poem that concludes the collection: "Why I Am Not a Painter," which I mentioned in Friday's post. Diane graciously gave me permission to republish the poem here. Thanks, Diane. After reading more than a hundred pages of poems about desire, encountering the poem's Read more [...]

This is the sort of thing that catches my eye when I'm walking in Chicago. In my imagination it shifts into a plane covered with shapes and colors. And then I wish I could paint the image I'm holding in my mind's eye. I turn to Diane Wakoski's poem, "Why I Am Not a Painter," which isn't as well known as Frank O'Hara's poem with the same title, but should be. I read and reread it. Yesterday I helped an artist compose her artist's statement. Words did not Read more [...]

You'll have to imagine the fragrance and damp wind of autumn, the rush of the Grand River (flowing toward Lake Michigan), and the roar and stink of city traffic. I wonder what Henry David Thoreau would have made of this moment, captured at ArtPrize 2012, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. At the age of 20, prompted by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau began writing--and often drawing--in a journal almost daily. Exploring the relationship between nature and culture would become the centerpiece Read more [...]

Yet the trees grow. - Aldo Leopold "Yet the Trees Grow" is the title of an unpublished essay by Aldo Leopold. "Empires spread over the continents, destroying soils, the floras and faunas, and each other," writes the grandfather of land stewardship, "Yet the trees grow. . . . Philosophies spread over the empires teaching the good life with tank and bomb. . . . Goods are plowed under or burned. . . . Yet the trees grow." I came upon excerpts from this expression of Read more [...]

I was prepared to write about teaching Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac today, but the Poem of the Day (by e. e. cummings) on poetryfoundation.org seized my imagination immediately, so I've decided to share it instead. We all know that not all poems, especially modern and contemporary ones, are lyrical. Not all poets have "an ear," and some who do, go for deliberately discordant aural effects. I often admire the ideas or images in such poems. I tend to enjoy William Carolos Read more [...]