Marilyn Krysl


	................................. Nonfiction
		Sacred and Profane: the Sestina as Rite A high school English teacher had assigned Dylan Thomas’ villanelle ?Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.? The poem drew me by its probing of loss. I’d lost the hearing in my left ear when I was ten, and when we moved from the Midwest to the west coast, I learned the devastation of being taken suddenly from my birth place. Thomas’ villanelle resonated. It rocked like a canoe on the buoyance of diction and syntax, its two repeating lines the canoe’s curved sides. ?Poetry is a form, reaching out,? Edward Hirsch writes, ?a disembodied hand--a voice--coming from darkness into light....?1 Thomas’ poem beckoned, inviting me in. It was the impulse to writing my first villanelle more... Water Rites In a circle of elms near the stone farmhouse, my grandfather had cemented a shallow pool. I entered this cylinder of shade, lay on my belly. Fish slid in lazy loops. Domed light arched over this sphere. Only the fish moved, in that other world, the one under water. I was four I had heard my grandparents talking about how badly we needed rain. Their faces registered concern. I would have to do something to help, but what? I picked up a twig, dropped it in. The twig floated at the center of concentric ripples. Then, on the opposite rim, something thick and dark slid down to the water and in. more...


	Tips for Writers:
		Writers write. Writers are addicts addicted to writing. We write doggedly, obsessively, compulsively, and we do this because we have fallen in love with the sounds and rhythms of language. If you are going to write, you will already have fallen in love with that music. What you will do is continue in that love affair. That said, it’s important to acknowledge that we are not the source of “our” writing. The living earth is the source of everything, including language. Read David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. We are merely a place in earth’s mesh, a place where words from time to time appear, and we pass those words we receive on, back into the world. Feel grateful. Express gratefulness to the live earth around you. Give away as much money as you can afford as often as you can. Feed your local gods every day. Remember that we do nothing independently. Remember that we are also responsible for our decisions. Now go outside and get down on your knees on the ground.

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