Inspiration Is Inside (Michael Intro) (11/09/2019)

Heads Up, Your Inspiration Is Inside | The Weekly Atticus

November 09, 2019

This letter is a recap of the week at

Atticus Review

, along with some extras. There's little time left to submit to our

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“So… what am I supposed to write about?”

A somewhat frazzled student posed that question to me recently, after I did the duty of any benevolent dictator and shoehorned a creative writing project into our normally dry, mandated curriculum. The student’s tone hinted that an earlier draft of that sentence might even have contained an expletive or two, which she was doing her best to keep to herself.

I tried not to smile. After all, I could tell that the student intended no disrespect, and her recent paper on the ethical necessity and cost effectiveness of stem cell research indicated that she certainly wasn’t lacking in intelligence. Rather, she was filled with dread. And who can blame her?

Odds are that not one of her high school English teachers ever pointed out that while Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Whitman were groundbreaking writers whose work roiled with beauty and brilliance, they also happened to be common mortals who required bathing, who were riddled with quirks and hypocrisies, who took wrong turns through cities and suffered occasional bouts of indigestion. Probably in an attempt to heighten interest by injecting grave seriousness into the classroom, far too many teachers over-elevate the relatively few writers that students are exposed to. Thus, students come to see writers as gods — the joyless kind who cannot be understood and who never answer prayers.

But, as I explained to the nervous young aspirant who was sweating worse than her Starbucks iced coffee, inspiration need not be won by clawing your way to the top of a mountain and sacrificing your childhood on a bloodstained altar. (Okay, I didn’t actually say that, but I wish I had.) Rather, inspiration can be found in line at the bank, imagining what befell the rumpled soul in line ahead of you. It can be found in the shadows of the stray cat shadowing up to your porch. Tell me, when was the last time you really

looked

at the faces of drivers who pass you as you wait to cross the street?

I’ve often thought that writing comes down to three things: inspiration, persistence, and craft. Those last two are tough. As for inspiration, that swirls around us like quarks after the Big Bang. It is darkness, pinched down tight and dense enough to become light. In our hands — yours and mine — it is the raw matter from which stars are made.

This Weekly Atticus is a special one for me because it contains our first

, featuring the poets of the vibrant poetry scene there. I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.

 

Michael Meyerhofer

Poetry Editor

 

 

ATTICUS NEWS

Thanks to all who entered our Flash Fiction Contest! We plan to announce winners by the second week in December.

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

POETRYAll Fresno Poetry Issue: Volume 1Selections from Brynn Saito, Megan Anderson Bohigian, Marisol Baca, Lee Herrick, and Tim Skeen.READ ON

FICTIONQby Brett Armes"Q’s parasitic sac begins to itch. He runs his fingers across the back of his skull searching for the thread. When he finds it, he yanks it out."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONA MEDITATION ON SNAKESby Gary Fincke"...within the limbic system, where processing feelings occurs, there is a shortfall of gray matter inside a psychopath’s brain. Snakes, he added, expecting me to agree, only act like snakes."READ ON

MIXED MEDIACAROUSELA videopoem by Charlie Baylis, Mark Campbell Garrity, and Fatosh"We filmed Carousel on a cold winter evening in in the market square, Nottingham. It is about regretting the past, but knowing that you can’t change it."READ ON

BOOK REVIEWTHE CONTENTS OF OUR LOST-AND-FOUNDSA Review of ODSBURG by Matt Tompkins from Ooligan Press Review by Michael Barron"Odsburg, while enjoyable as a collection of supernatural tales, is perhaps more a tribute to the nature of writing itself..."GET THE BOOKREAD THE REVIEW

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