I don’t know why I am like this, or how this came to be. I imagine there was a time when I felt confident, when I could simply be, rather than perform, relative to him, relative to her. But I’ve lost touch with when that was. Something happened — puberty perhaps? Childhood? Adulthood? Something made me painfully self-aware, so paralyzed by the perception of others that getting dressed, leaving the house, opening my mouth suddenly became a difficult chore.

As a young woman, I learned to wear fitted clothes, hide behind a large mass of curls, and sing the choral refrain, figuring that I was sharing the best of me, the pieces of me that people actually wanted to see: the positively focused, the aesthetically pleasing, the non-confrontational.

Except that wasn’t really the truth. And I believe in telling the truth.

It’s difficult for self-conscious people to commit themselves to something like writing creative nonfiction. Truth-telling is the core of the mission, and a fully examined self is almost always part of the game. It’s tempting to edit around the details, forget entire chapters to maintain one’s hiding place behind a thick curtain of hair.

Confession: I have a piece of writing that I’m currently hiding from. It is out there in the world, but I haven’t the courage to post it on my social media accounts. It’s an honest piece of me — not the environmental scientist-writer-mother me, but the stay-at-home-mother me who sometimes struggles with being a wife and mom because of how it was modeled for me.

This is considerably less comfortable to share than the identity for whom I have purchased professional business cards.

If the piece had been an environmental essay, as I’m otherwise accustomed to write, I would have gladly shared it far and wide, maybe even feeling a little righteous about doing the “good work” of environmental advocacy, of flexing my scientific muscles and applying knowledge obtained during the pursuit of my graduate degrees. I would have felt good when I received the editor’s e-mail that the piece was now live. I wouldn’t have woken up in the middle of the night, heart pounding in my chest.

But this is not such a piece. It is, simply, a glimpse of me with my hair pulled back and my flawed self showing. A glimpse of the things that used to keep me awake at night.

In graduate school, when I was working toward my MFA, a friend of mine who is also a creative nonfiction writer said, “I don’t think CNF writers get enough credit for the work that goes into their writing.” By which she meant the work before the work, the courage it takes to go there and wrestle that, the courage it takes to face the consequences of everything in between.

Last night I started reading Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and nearly a hundred pages had gone by before I could even put it down. The entire time, I thought: Holy shit, she’s brave. This is so fucking raw. But I could imagine people, people I know and love nodding along, feeling less alone in the world because of what she has decided to share.

I wish I had that confidence. I wish didn’t feel so compelled to hide from some of the writing that wants to come out.

But I do. I’m just so used to hiding my face.

It’s out there, though.  I was at least able to do that.

And maybe if  I

hold

my

breath,

I can squeeze my eyes shut and let you look here and see me.

Just this once.

The post On Hiding appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

This year, the surreal atmosphere of AWP was heightened by a regional youth dance competition simultaneously being held at the Minneapolis Convention Center — and to me, the juxtaposition of dance moms and their bedazzled, spandex-ed little girls against poets and academics who could act as stand-ins on an episode of Portlandia made the whole operation feel a little like “Little Miss AWP.”  I can remember observing as I trudged to a 9 am panel on the lyric essay that some of these dance moms seem a helluva lot more committed to their craft than I am to mine.

But in fact, it’s devotion to the craft that brings me to AWP every year — the urge to keep my writing impulse located as much in the professional realm as I can make it, as opposed to a nice little hobby for a stay-at-home mom.  Still, my enthusiasm for this year’s gathering was tempered by the aftermath of my decision to publish some of my work, because when you write creative nonfiction like I do, there are usually real people involved in the story.  And for me, the very act of transitioning my art and craft from hobby to profession has been labeled as an act of defiance.

I am all too familiar with punishment and the threat of punishment for my actions —which provides some explanation for the confidence issues I have— and this year for AWP, I packed an extra bag of guilt for what I’ve shared.  In my hotel room, I poured over the schedule and catalog of panel descriptions to find a remedy for this problem of mine, something to nourish my confidence, resurrect my stalled creative process.  And though many of the panels I chose to attend were helpful and good, nothing —no powerpoint presentation, no panel of distinguished academics— was as useful to me as just sitting with my writer peers over a nice glass of wine and sharing our publishing stories.

It should come as no surprise that many of us, whether poets, novelists, or nonfiction writers, have a mother/father/sister/brother or spouse/ex-spouse who is holding our story hostage.  And even though I knew that I wasn’t alone, I felt all alone until someone else sat down with me in a quiet part of the restaurant to share their own experience with me.  I can tell you first hand: nothing eases the guilt of wrongs committed, the pain of relationships strained than just sitting with another person and talking about how he or she is riding in a similar kind of boat.

And isn’t that what reading and writing is all about?  Making those connections so we feel a little less alone in the world?  Isn’t that what we’re doing when we allow someone else to read our work?

Of course it is.  It just took someone else sharing their story to remind me that it’s okay to share mine, too.

photo credits: “Little Miss Sunshine” (Twentieth Century Fox)

The post The Moral of Little Miss AWP appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

I know a thing or two about doubt.  I know the feeling, as an environmental scientist, of second-guessing my calculations, the nagging paranoia that I’ve based important regulatory decisions on incorrect assumptions.  And as a writer, I am well-acquainted with the metallic taste of self-doubt — of sharing too much, or not enough, or misjudging my aesthetic.  To a certain degree, I think it’s healthy to second-guess.  Keeps one from settling too comfortably on their haunches, so to speak.  But sometimes, the tendency to be uncertain can be hijacked by others with thinly veiled agendas.

In February of this year, right before I was to deliver a reading of an essay from Creative Nonfiction’s The Human Face of Sustainability contest, I was alerted by CNF editor Lee Gutkind and someone from the marketing staff of Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability that there was some controversy regarding my piece.  Not to worry, they said, discussion is good.  But they wanted me to know in case something came up during my reading.  Then they shared what others had said.

For those who haven’t read the piece, “Acts of Courage” explores the increasing incidence of childhood cancers juxtaposed against our increased use of toxic chemicals — the evidence of which is documented by the presence of chemicals in our water, soil, food, and other consumer products (listen to the podcast reading of the essay here).  Many of these chemicals are known and suspected carcinogens, others have been released into the marketplace and environment without sufficient testing.  In the piece, I make no specific accusations about cause and effect; rather, I simply weave the facts together, shine a light into a dark corner and ask, “Shouldn’t we be looking here?”

The news of my essay winning The Human Face of Sustainability contest ruffled some feathers — a few scientists and scholars (whose identities I choose not to reveal in the interest of professional dignity) who read the blurb about my piece in ASU’s press release and responded with surprising disdain.  I will spare you the details, but here are some of the phrases that were being kicked around: “Of course this is junk… I don’t know of any science that supports this scare mongering.”  “We don’t need science becoming magic. Traces of this and that will kill you.”  And my favorite: “It would seem that any prize for creative non-fiction should be for something that is actually non-fiction.”

Ouch.  I was certain I was about to be ambushed.

The threat of attack sent me into a manic state of self-doubt, and I scoured my research to double-check the statistics and prepare for my reading as if it were a thesis defense.  These were scholars, after all, people with a helluva lot more academic credentialing than me.  At some point though, late in the night before my reading, when my anxiety had reached critical mass, I decided to focus my research on my attackers instead.

Sure enough, the special interests began to emerge — representatives of, and affiliations with institutes and organizations against chemical regulation, funded by petroleum, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries.  I had just experienced firsthand the strategic employment of doubt, the attack-via-uncertainty.  The defensive offensive.

This is a card frequently played in the environment-verses-industry game, the latest round evident in Steven E. Koonin’s “Climate Science is Not Settled” piece — which is, of course, being applauded by fossil fuel lobbyists (for more discussion, see Andrew Revkin’s blog post “Certainties, Uncertainties, and Choices with Global Warming” at Dot Earth).  Better not do anything about climate change… the science is still uncertain.  Score one for the status quo.

But here’s the thing we need to understand: while scientific uncertainty is a valid topic to wrestle and discuss, it is currently being (ab)used as a ploy to distract from the real issue at hand — by which I mean the ethics behind our culture’s approach to things like chemical regulation and climate change.  Ethical questions such as: Is it morally acceptable to burden future generations with providing the evidence of harm?  Or as Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael Nelson have asked in their co-edited book, Moral Ground: Do we have a moral obligation to leave future generations with a world as rich in possibility as the one that was left to us?  These are the questions that should drive our actions, and they are exactly the ones environmental opponents seek to avoid.  Why? Because their answers are less susceptible to doubt.

Despite the uncertainty, I do believe that the scientific evidence of human-caused global climate change is solid, as is the scientific argument for using the precautionary principle in chemical regulation.  The data glare at us like a mid-day sun, and the doubt cast by climate deniers and other industry loyalists is a tactic — just a moment in time when the sun is obscured by the moon.  There was a time when people were afraid of the solar eclipse.  Today we should know better than that.

The post On the (Ab)use of Doubt appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

In the MFA program, the essay is essential — the Swiss Army knife of form, empowering a writer to tackle all manner of subjects through all manner of style.  One can whittle and maim, uncork spirits or cut out a heart.  It is safe and unsafe, something with which you might even trust a child, but not without first explaining the danger of what can happen with its misuse.  For a creative nonfiction writer, the essay is a rite of passage, like the overnight field trip in the fifth grade — sleep-away camp, where you’re forced to confront and explore all the wonders and anxieties of your newly expanded world.

But in the literary marketplace, essay is the sweater vest, the SNL-spoof of NPR (Delicious Dish, anyone?).  At its best, it seems to be viewed as the narrow humor section of the bookstore, à la the great David Sedaris. At its worst: the faded, silk-flowered storefront in a dying Midwestern town.  No, we essayists are told, best to characterize your work as an autobiographical novel, a series of linked stories, or gonzo journalism if you can pull it off — something that might actually sell.

Except in recent months, I’ve noticed a change in the tide, or rather, what feels like a geologic shift: Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams is a summer blockbuster in both the independent and popular markets.  Her collection, featuring essays that examine human pain and how we handle one another’s pain, made its debut on the New York Times bestseller list (among other bestseller lists) this year, and has been noted by Poets & Writers, The New Yorker, and NPR as a book to watch out for — almost unheard of for this particular genre.

How has she done this?

Notwithstanding Jamison’s compelling topic, I think what we’re seeing is something bigger — something specific to the form.  Not just the essay, but the personal essay: the form that weaves personal narrative into its history and research and facts.  And personal story is the element with which Jamison has particular skill.  Her work speaks directly to us, bridges a connection through our shared vulnerabilities.  Like a camera in a documentary, she says: look at this person’s condition, now take a look at mine.  Feel what we feel, experience our stories, let them tingle with your own.  Then pull back and see how they fit the bigger puzzle.  In so doing, Jamison has made relevant our own little earthquakes.

Turns out our hunger for connection is greater than our desire to be entertained.

Or maybe it’s just our fatigue with the increasingly formulaic approach to literature.  Chick Lit.  Vampires.  50 Shades of Sex.  Maybe we are just weary from the staging that’s required of us in this reality TV culture: cultivating Twitter and Facebook perfection while our souls are tiring out.

Our souls are tiring out.

Jamison herself says, “When you write, you do the work of connecting that terrible privacy to everything beyond it.”  That’s the power of the personal essay: its careful reconstruction and examination, even wrestling of something studied to weave a complex tapestry of people and places and experiences and desires — the threads of which readers will recognize from their own lives.  Recognize and lean in, because something about it thrums.  Awakens a familiar smell.

With the arrival of The Empathy Exams, I dare say the anxiety I feel about calling myself an essayist — even to an agent — has subsided, perhaps even evolved into something more like pride.

photo credits:

The Empathy Exams book cover courtesy of NPR.org

Sweater vest nerd image courtesy of derfmagazine.com

Leslie Jamison headshot by Colleen Kinder, image courtesy of publishersweekly.com

The post Making Essay Cool: The Power of Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

It was a quiet corridor of nature in an otherwise typical piece of midwestern Americana — disorganized, tenacious greenery hidden from the asphalt roads that took families in station wagons to Ace Hardware and Dairy Queen.  Out there, along the tracks, clusters of goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace danced under miles of woody shrubs and fluttering young hardwoods — there were invasive weeds and native trees recovering from years of disturbance, but to me it felt like wilderness.

It didn’t matter that there were rusty cans and broken glass strewn along the berms, or that the creosote-treated railroad ties left a persistent smell of tar in the air. This was a place where the imperfect seam between human and nature, between parent and child seemed simpler, surficial, and my father and I could walk along the metal rails, bumping our bikes over the railroad ties without falling off.

Usually, that is.

If you’ve ever walked along railroad tracks, you know that the ones with the shiniest rails are the ones that carry more freight.  They’re the active rails, the tracks that carry important cargo to and fro, the ones you want to follow.  These are the rails that vibrate when something’s coming, warning you to step off and run down the berm because the track is alive now and if you’re not careful, anything can happen.

Maybe that’s the thrill of writing true stories and walking the tracks: knowing what can hit you at any moment.  There’s an inherent tension between wanting to follow the line as far as it will take you and somehow knowing you’re pushing your luck.  As creative nonfiction writers, we know that at any moment, the ground will rumble and the horn will blast and now we’ve put ourselves at risk.  It’s a difficult line to walk.

The shiny rails are the most slippery, and as a kid I would always fall when I got too scared, or over-confident and walked too fast.  My father was not the type of father who would stop and wait, so I learned very quickly to figure out a way to just keep up.  And I suppose in some ways, the doggedness he taught me then is what I’m relying on now to get myself back on track with my work.

But there’s also this: whenever the trains came, we were forced to stop and be present in that moment.  We’d guide our bikes down the berm, then turn and wait for the rumble of the oncoming engine, the pitch of the horn piercing the air.  The thundering grew ever stronger, and then we’d stand together, bracing ourselves against the wind of the speeding train. I remember now my father’s arms around me as the cars clacked quickly by.

I’m realizing now that this is supposed to be an exercise in slowing down.  In recognizing the power of a moment.   Lately, I have immersed myself in the work of Abigail Thomas and the rich simplicity of Margaret Chula’s tanka and haiku.  I know that I’ll climb up that berm as soon as the tracks have cleared.  But for now, I’m just going to close my eyes and continue taking in the wind.

Photo credit: Joshua Michtom, http://greenfriar.com/crosstie-walker-2014-03-10

The post Getting Back on Track appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

Thank you, Dean Tuchinsky, Justin, Annie, Robin, Stonecoast faculty and staff, friends, families, graduates and distinguished guests.  I am so honored to be standing up here tonight and especially humbled to represent my fellow and extraordinarily talented Creative Nonfiction graduates.

We have shared so much with each other and I feel so privileged to have gotten a glimpse into each of your experiences and truth-telling journeys.  I want to thank our families especially, for supporting us through the all work that comes before our literary work — be it research… or therapy… or in my case, both.  And I specifically want to thank you for providing us with good material.  For the record, all writers use their families for material — CNF writers are just more forthcoming about it.

Now, as a member of this incredible group, I feel it is my duty to clarify a common misconception that is held about the Creative Nonfiction genre and CNF workshops here at Stonecoast:  We do not — I repeat, DO NOT pass tissues around the table when we workshop.  It would have been nice, though, because — and I know this may shock some of you — I am… the CNF Crier.

I’d like to think of it as a position of honor, like a Town Crier, except that instead of wearing a fancy pirate hat and carrying a bell to deliver important proclamations, I have this ridiculous head of hair and carry snacks and actually cry.  Sometimes during workshop.  Once in front of faculty (if Deb Marquart were here, she’d be nodding her head).  I am, unfortunately that one who feeds the cliché.  You know, the image of Creative Nonfiction writers that depicts us gathered around the table, burning candles, doing deep yoga breathing, confessing our deepest sorrows.  The stereotype that sometimes saddles this genre with the unfortunate reputation of ‘therapy over craft,’ of ‘confession above literature.’

Well lucky for us, this is Stonecoast.  And at Stonecoast, nothing rises above literature. Here, literature is the medium not just for telling stories, but for challenging unfair stereotypes, for lending voice to the voice-less, for advocacy and activism.  And for creative nonfiction writers, these stories are not just true, they’re often personal, and —whether through literary journalism, or memoir or essay— wrestle difficult issues like freedom and oppression, racial and sexual discrimination, love and grief, abuse and neglect.  So yes, what we deal with stirs emotion.

Perhaps that’s why I, and undoubtedly other Creative Nonfiction writers, feel the distinct and pointed pressure to pay particular attention to our craft.  To pour all of our intellect into the rhythm of our sentences, the vibration of our imagery, the lyricism of our prose.  It has to be good, because… well, you know.  We’re telling stories that are true, and when they’re about us, we haven’t anything behind which to hide.  Not the structure of a sonnet or the made-up name of a fictional character.   This makes some of us feel a little more sensitive, a little more exposed.

Now, as the CNF Crier, I feel a certain duty to the other genres to do some nation-building around this issue — become an ambassador, if you will, to the virtues of being a Crier.  So I will share with you some of my own daily Stonecoast affirmations:

1.        Crying makes you sexy.  It’s true!  Everyone looks good when they cry, and this is especially true if you have blotchy, freckly skin like myself.
2.        Crying serves as an important function in the ranking of an academic program.  For instance, the more of us who cry after the blunt trauma delivery of Rick Bass-kicking wisdom, the more the legend lives, right?  Tough faculty = tough program = high marks, which benefits all of us.  Faculty, administration: you’re welcome.
3.        Crying serves as an excellent ice breaker between fellow students.  Better than stickers or drawings on your name tag.  Trust me, when you’re a Crier, everyone knows who you are.

But in all seriousness, what I’m talking about is vulnerability — something with which Creative Nonfiction has specific experience and particular advantage, because again, our stories are often personal.  And I think the vulnerability in our stories is what makes readers lean in.  Vulnerability is what bridges the gulf between two otherwise separate groups until they’re close enough to admit of each other’s conditions: “Hey, yeah, — me, too.”  The authenticity of our stories is what connects us, what becomes the building blocks for community, the agents of social change.  And this, my writer friends, cuts across all genres.  There are no genre boundaries around the human condition.  No mutually exclusive ownership of longing, pain, empathy and love.  — Which brings me to my final affirmation:

4. Crying reveals what a supportive and nurturing community we have here in Stonecoast.

Last residency, I stood up in front of several of you at Open Mic to read a short piece that I had written about my family.  I’d had plenty of practice in writing through what Creative Nonfiction writers call “the hard place.”  So I thought nothing of standing up in front of my peers to read something revealing about my youth.

Well, writing through the hard place and reading through the hard place are two entirely different learning curves.  And I was not nearly far enough along when I stepped behind the podium.

For those of you who weren’t there, I’ll summarize: I started to cry.  But what really happened is that I tried to restrain a surge of emotion that felt a little like stomach-pounding nausea with the urgency of childbirth.  I panicked, so when I glanced up and saw Trevor the Timekeeper doing his little dance, I gulped and said something like, “So maybe I’ll just… stop?”

But everyone in that room was listening, leaning in, urging me to finish. I looked at Trevor.  He looked at me with serious eyes and —like we were in a Rocky movie or something— gave me one pump of his fist that said, Go on.  You can do it.
— Which I did, and when I finally finished, it was for more than just myself.  That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?  That electricity between storyteller and listener, between writer and reader.  Electric moments generated by the current of vulnerability in our work.  So my parting words to you: Don’t be afraid to cry a little in your work.  There will be a family —in whatever broad sense you define— waiting to embrace you.  The first one will be your Stonecoast family.  Congratulations and thank you.  I love you all.

The post On the Virtues of Crying: A Graduation Speech appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

I once submitted an essay to a Famous Editor with a note that read “Enclosed is a lyric essay, blah, blah, blah…,” and he sent it back saying, “Yes, good, we’ll take it, etcetera, but shouldn’t ‘lyric’ be something someone else says about your essay?”

—Which reveals a common misconception about the lyric essay: that it is merely an ornamental device, a compliment to one’s writing, a label to which one’s work aspires, like “powerful” or “poetic.”  When in fact, the lyric essay is a thing, an intended form of essay that seeks to deepen the artistic experience of creative nonfiction, just like modern art and contemporary performance art movements seek to evolve their own forms of artistic expression.

For me, the lyric essay was like opening the door to the Secret Garden.  It was a place that provided permission and space for me to play and explore so I could discover my authentic narrative voice.  All great, but here was the problem: when I would share my lyric essays in workshops and writing circles, I noticed that people were often reluctant to critique, like they didn’t know whether to eat what I had served with a fork or with a spoon.

I love this quote from Brian Doyle’s “Playfulnessless,” in Vol. 15, No. 1 issue of River Teeth:

Thesis: the essay is the widest fattest most generous open glorious honest endlessly expandable form of committing prose not only because it cheerfully steals and hones all the other tools and talents of all other forms of art, and not only because it is admirably and brilliantly closest to not only the speaking voice but the maundering salty singing voices in our heads, but also because it is the most playful of forms, liable to hilarity and free association and startlement, without the filters and mannered disguises and stiff dignity of fiction and poetry and journalism, respectively. Discuss.

What Brian Doyle is talking about is the malleability of the essay as a form, the flexibility of the structure itself.  And that, to me, is what the lyric essay is all about: bucking tradition and playing with form, so that instead of the predictable circle-and-dive structure of a more traditional personal essay, the lyric essayist’s narrative “hawk” does something different and unexpected in its pursuit of the truth.

So what are the ways in which the lyric essayist essays?  In the Fall 1997 Special Edition of Seneca Review, in which The Lyric Essay was first defined, editors John D’Agata and Deborah Tall noted that this new hybrid form “gives primacy to artfulness over the conveying of information, forsaking narrative line, discursive logic, and the art of persuasion in favor of idiosyncratic meditation.”  Meaning that the reader is invited into a the stream-of-consciousness view of the narrator’s essay process, rather than a constructed representation of the issue(s) they have already wrestled.

For me, the difference between a more traditional essay and a lyric essay is not unlike the difference between the realistic, still-life paintings of Norman Rockwell and the more contemporary art of Robert Rauschenberg or Jackson Pollock.  Rather than holding the reader’s hand along a guided trail of thought, the lyric essayist provides clues, using the juxtaposition of contrasting images or ideas to convey emotion or explore a theme.  The lyric essayist texturizes his or her prose with layers to convey the complexity of the content, presenting different threads, patterns of thought, and points of intersection.  It’s like walking on a path made of stepping stones — more fun than just walking on dirt.

And rather than being strictly disciplined in form and movement, formulaic in its positioning —like ballet or a 5-paragraph essay— the lyric essay is more organic in its movement, free to borrow devices and techniques from other genres and art forms to illustrate the quest for understanding.  Some traits:

1.    Experimentation with form:

•   Exclusion of linear, logical sequence — organized by themes other than chronology
•   Distilled language, use of poetic imagery and rhythmic sentences
•   Use of fragments and white space, section headings and numbers — taking shape with fragments assembled into mosaics or narrative strands woven into braids
•   Inhabiting other unexpected forms to tell a story (disguising)
•   Omission of smooth narrative transitions — movement involves associative leaps

2.    Uses the power of inference — more active reliance on reader’s intuition to complete the narrator’s thought

3.    Main craft element is the juxtaposition (or associative leaps between) language and imagery

Still, even with an understanding of its traits, many wonder how to go about critiquing the lyric essay.  And while I would no sooner advise someone on this than I would critiquing contemporary art or the mechanics of modern dance, I do think it’s fair to ask whether the piece works, whether it has succeeded in making a connection with a reader on an emotional level.  Of course, like any art form, critiquing a lyric essay is subjective, but I offer some questions to consider:

1.    What is the essay’s aesthetic appeal?  Visually? Rhythmically?
2.    Does the imagery in the piece work?
3.    Do the juxtapositions of imagery and language resonate? Do the contrasts “thrum”?
4.    Can the reader follow the organization and associative leaps between sections?
5.    Is the content best handled in lyric form, or does the construction seem “gimmicky”?
6.    Can the reader understand what the essay is about?  What issue(s) it wrestles?
7.    Is the reader left confused, or does the essay compel the reader to think or consider something new?

So.  These points may not clarify whether you should enjoy a lyric essay with a fork or a with spoon, but perhaps it will empower you to simply dive in with your heart.  Happy reading.

The post On the Lyric Essay appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

Indeed, Earth Works presents itself almost like an academic text (especially opening with an essay about ‘the essay’), the writing within clearly demonstrating Sanders to be a master of the craft.  The cadence of his prose is smooth and soothing, the vocabulary intellectual and wise without being pretentious.  The transitions between his sections are fluid, with just the right pause, like a gulp of air before swimming another gentle lap.  And yet, despite the tenderness of the tone, Sanders is still able to evoke a sense of urgency and alarm in his message — particularly about the tendency of people to impose violence against the Earth and one another, the loss of wildness and nature, the erosion of our connection to our planet.   His essays convey a seriousness without hostility, a profound disappointment in, instead of anger at, our misguided animal selves.  Rather than the high-pitched, alarmist, melodramatic environmental writing that the general readership has learned to tune out, Sanders’ work patiently and consistently reminds us: we are a part of this Earth, and this Earth is part of us.  Do you see how we are failing it?  Do you see how we’re failing ourselves?

How does Sanders do this?  How does he convey the magnitude of what we face without raising his narrative voice?  And how does he demand accountability to our surroundings without invoking an accusing tone?  This literary craft blog post examines two particular craft elements that Sanders employs to heighten his environmental message: the use of unexpected contrast to shock the reader out of complacency, and the deliberate interchanging of natural images with human gestures and conditions to illustrate our parallel needs.

Use of Contrast in “At Play in the Paradise of Bombs”

In his essay, “At Play in the Paradise of Bombs,” Sanders awakens his readers to the harrowing losses of war and environmental decay by juxtaposing dissimilar words and images in his text.  The piece itself examines Sanders’ childhood move, in 1951, from Memphis, Tennessee to the Army Arsenal in Northeastern Ohio, where he and other children of Arsenal employees and military personnel grew up playing in the shadows of a munitions plant.  The very title of this piece jars us with an array of words that are not supposed to fit together: ‘play,’ ‘paradise,’ and ‘bombs’.   Sanders carries this ‘contrast’ theme throughout the essay, peppering the prose with opposing images and words to illuminate the irony of our society’s accepted norms: neighborhood and Arsenal, children playing near ammunition, boys mimicking war, wildlife sanctuary and poison.  Of military machinery, he writes:

…On the front porch of our Memphis home I had read GI Joe Comic books, and so I knew the names and shapes of these death-dealing engines.  In the gaudy cartoons the soldiers had seemed like two-legged chunks of pure glory, muttering speeches between bursts on their machine guns, clenching the pins of grenades between their dazzling teeth. (p. 13-14)

The coupling of ‘grenades’ with ‘dazzling teeth’ underscores the glorification of war evident in Sanders’ boyhood toys, and the contrast of his innocent proficiency with the terminology of “death-dealing engines” signals the reader to pause and think: Why is it okay for a child to know so much about killing machines?

The reality of war, of course, is bone-chilling, and Sanders writes about “a needle of dread” settling in upon seeing real tanks on the compound, and driving past “guard houses manned by actual soldiers.”  Rather than the cartoon images of men and glory, Sanders learned that the Arsenal was “a fenced wilderness devoted to the building and harboring of the instruments of death.” (p. 14)

— Which brings us to another contrast: ‘wilderness’ (abundant life) and ‘instruments of death.’  Here, Sanders juxtaposes his childhood exploration of the woods within the Arsenal’s fortress against the environmental consequences of weapons production.  He recalls:

Even where the army’s poisons had been dumped, nature did not give up.  In a remote corner of the Arsenal, on land that had been used as a Boy Scout camp before the war, the ground was so filthy with the discarded makings of bombs that not even the guards would do there.  But we children went, lured on by the scarlet warning signs: DANGER.  RESTRICTED AREA.  …In my bone marrow I carry traces of the poison from that graveyard of bombs, as we all carry a smidgen of radioactivity from every atomic blast.  Perhaps at this very moment one of those alien molecules, like a grain of sand in an oyster, is irritating some cell in my body, or in your body, to fashion a pearl of cancer. (p. 16)

The opposing forces of words like ‘poisons,’ ‘Boy Scout camp,’ and ‘discarded makings of bombs’ or ‘children’ and ‘DANGER’ instill immediate concern in the reader’s mind: This was a place where children were taught to appreciate and survive in nature, how could they have allowed it to become a toxic and dangerous dumping ground?  Sanders even uses contrasting images to dramatize the health risks of the Arsenal’s chemical releases: a pearl, a rare and cherished commodity, with cancer, an ever-increasing and dreaded fatal disease.

Sanders’ successful manipulation of contrasting words and images throughout this piece allows him to maintain a consistent narrative tone while startling the reader to a new awareness.  Like the eerie coupling of childhood innocence with demonic possession in a horror movie, this technique of pairing opposing forces in an essay can foster frightening revelations.

Comparison of Human Condition to Natural Rhythms in “The Force of Spirit”

The other craft technique that Sanders uses to nurture an environmental consciousness in his reader is his subtle, yet deliberate insertion of simile and metaphor into the prose to infer connection between the human condition and the natural world.  For instance, in “The Force of Spirit,” Sanders examines the concept of spirituality, pondering the force that wills people to live, the energy that can ripple over a landscape.  He describes the way his wife’s parents have aged and approached death, drawing comparisons with natural environmental rhythms to suggest that the “spirit” which drives our love of life is also the same force that makes rivers flow and seedlings burst through soil:

Ruth’s father, still able to get around fairly well back then, had just been to see Dessa in the special care unit, where patients suffering from various forms of dementia drifted about like husks blown by an idle breeze. (p. 239)

To say that [Ruth’s father] is dying makes it sound as though he’s doing something active, like singing or dancing, but really something is being done to him.  Life is leaving him.  From one visit to the next we can see it withdrawing, inch my inch, the way the tide retreating down a beach leaves behind dry sand. (p. 240)

The way Sanders compares ailing patients to “husks blown by an idle breeze,” and his dying father-in-law to a withdrawing ocean tide, implies an inherent connection of this human condition to the natural rhythm of the Earth.  And in so doing, the reader is compelled by extension, to consider the suffering or dying of a landscape to that of a fellow human being.  This inference is subtle, but real, and Sanders confirms this intention in his analysis:

…I want a name for the force that binds me to Ruth, to her parents, to my parents, to our children, to neighbors and friends, to the land and all its creatures.

The power is larger than life, although it contains life.  It is tougher than love, although it contains love.  It is akin to the power I sense in the lambs nudging the teats of their dams to bring down milk, in the raucous tumult of crows high in trees, in the splendor of leaves gorging on sun.  I recognize this force at work in children puzzling over a new fact, in grown-ups welcoming strangers, in our capacity, young and old, for laughter and kindness, for mercy and imagination.

…Whether we call that magnificent energy Spirit or Tao, Creator or God, Allah or Atman or some other holy name, or no name at all, makes little difference, so long as we honor it.  Wherever it flows — in person or place, in animal or plant or the whole of nature — we feel the pressure of the sacred, and that alone deserves our devotion.  (p. 242-243)

This union of human and Earth is the DNA of Sanders’ essays, and his interchanging of natural images with human emotions, gestures, and conditions is one of the signature traits in his outstanding body of work.

The post Inspiring Activism with a Soft Touch: Scott Russell Sanders’ Earth Works appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.