Nettifee - Glitter in the blood: a poets manifesto to better, braver writing

Copyright Mindy Nettifee 2012

No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, if living, except for critical articles or reviews.

Nettifee, Mindy.
1st edition.
ISBN: 978-1-938912-01-6

Interior Layout by Lea C. Deschenes
Cover Designed by Gary Musgrave
Author Photo by Brian S. Ellis
Interior Illustrations by Mindy Nettifee
Proofread by Ronnie K. Stephens
Edited by Derrick Brown
Type set in Bergamo from www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com

Other books by Mindy Nettifee:
Rise of the Trust Fall, Write Bloody Publishing
Sleepyhead Assassins, Moon Tide Press

Printed in Tennessee, USA

Write Bloody Publishing
Austin, TX
Support Independent Presses writebloody.com

To contact the author, send an email to

MADE IN THE USA

G LITTER IN THE B LOOD

T HE A UTHORS F ORWARD

The first title I imagined for this book was Glitter In The Blood: A Poets Manifesto For Better, Braver Writing and Living. That tail needed to be cut off. However, it is a central belief of mine that how you do anything is how you do everything. I think some yogi high on Topanga Canyon oxygen said that to me once. It stuck. It rearranged me.

I am not sure I can write about how I write without writing about how I live. I am not sure I can share with you the rules and unrules that govern my creative process without revealing to you how I dream at night, how I cook my soup on Sundays, how I have lived through what Ive lived through and wrestled sanity and integrity from it, while also reminding myself daily as an artist and a human that, in the words of choreographer Pina Bausch, You just have to get crazier.

But lets stay unfocused shall we? The central thesis of this poetry manifesto is about bravery. Once, after just having done the soul-shatteringest, scariest, bravest thing I had done to date, I walked out into the November night shaking and called a friend. I said, I did the math. I KNOW know this is what I was supposed to do. So why do I feel like a monster? The friend said, Oh. Thats what being brave feels like. Thats why so many people never do it.

A month earlier, I had gone to the big shmanzy Hollywood premiere screening of Danny Boyles film 127 Hours, in support of a friend who had been in the movie. I knew nothing about the movie going in. If you havent seen it, you will not understand when I tell you that the first hour of it was one of the most unbearable of my life. James Francos portrayal of canyoneer Aron Ralston, who was trapped in an isolated canyon in Utah when his arm became pinned down by a boulder, and who eventually had to cut his own arm off to save his life, was a little too good. As Aron got hungrier and thirstier and more desperate, I became hungrier and thirstier and more desperate. When he finally resolved to sever his arm and began, I could barely watch. These high-pitched chaotic strings played to represent the cutting of the nerves. I tried not to throw up. But he does it! He did it! And he emerged from the crevice, stumbled and fell to a dirty shallow pool of rainwater to drink, and then miraculously found hikers, rescuers. The ending was one of the most triumphant, emotional moments possible in cinema. But wait! This is not a too-long paragraph about that movie, but what happened after the standing ovation, and after the audience sat back down, openly sobbing, in shock. A man in the row in front of me stood up and began to make his way to the aisle. He was missing an arm. It was Aron. He walked up to the stage and was given a microphone, and made a brief, humbling, unaffected speech. He told us he was grateful for his experience, because what we need more than anything else in this world is stories of survival. He challenged us all to think about the boulders in our lives. He challenged us to get free of them, whatever it takes.

What I want to challenge you to do while reading this book and after, is to continue on your path as a human and a writer to be braver and braver and braver. This means doing the work. This means following your fear as often as you follow your happiness. The work is about personal growth, about exploring the unlit recesses in yourself that may or may not yield to your research. Doing the work means digging so deep you can no longer see the light. It means writing about the things that have such an emotional charge for you, you avoid thinking about them, let alone writing about them. And let me be clearwhen I say emotional charge, I do not just mean the sharp sparks of fear or shame, though those emotions are clear indications of something you need to confront. I also mean fear and shames younger sister, embarrassment. I also mean anger and rage. I also mean sadness. I also mean despair, and despairs twin, elation.

I am challenging you to do this because this is what I challenge myself to do to use my writing as a tool to free myself of the boulders. To madly engage in the process of living. To allow myself to be changed by my life experiences and my writing. To let go of my expectations, the ones I have even when I think I dont, of what I will be like on the other side of that change. To grow and grow and grow. To become whatever it is I am supposed to become.

In addition to honing in on my general tone and intent for this book, you may as well get used to me quoting Rob Brezsny, and other members of the radical intelligentsia, right now. He once wrote:

Its a great privilege to live in a free country. Youre fortunate if you have the opportunity to pursue your dreams without having to ward off government interference or corporate brainwashing or religious fanaticism.

But thats only partly useful if you have not yet won the most important struggle for liberation, which is the freedom from your own unconscious obsessions and conditioned responses. Becoming an independent agent whos not an unwitting slave to his or her shadow is one of the most heroic feats a human can accomplish.

This book is a guide to writing poetry. It contains practical advice about how to begin poems and end poems, how to play with structure, invent fresher imagery, make your poems tighter and more meaningful in the way you want them to be. But this is also a book where we enter sacred ground togetherour imaginations, our inner emotional geography, our shadow selves. We are doing this in order to become better writers, yes, but also to attempt the greater mastery that Brezsny gauntlets. How you do anything is how you do everything.

It is never too early in the day to be swallowing that kind of medicine.

There is one more thing I have to say about why Im declaring a collective poet journey into the inner unknown. Carl Jung believed that, in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darknessor perhaps because of this the shadow is the seat of creativity. Regardless of what you discover in the process of reading this book and doing the work it asks of you, you are headed straight to the center of the creativity engines. Its constantly shifting architecture is built by the cumulative wealth of everything you have ever seen or heard or felt or wished. Its where the worst nightmare you have ever had and your most beautiful Seuss-on-dopamine dream both came from.

If youre not afraid of those hidden inner clockworks, of what youll find in the dark, youre not not paying attention. But bravery is not about lacking fear; its about being scared out of your mind and still taking the plunge. Im ready if youre ready.

IN THE BEGINNING

The moment of change is the only poem.
Adrienne Rich

CHAPTER 1: T HE M YTH OF I NSPIRATION