And a softness
came from the starlight
and filled me to the bone.
~ Willam Butler Yeats, from The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems
For more on the life of Yeats, here’s a fascinating biography and a number of poems. Started my day reading about his life and a number of his poems. It was exhilerating.
William Butler Yeats
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Aug•
27•25
Brother, Electric
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Aug•
16•25
We’ve got rain in the forecast for tonight and I’m hoping it arrives. The break from the heat is so welcome especially since I just spent five days in Utah where the air was so parched and nasty I couldn’t wait to return to Oregon. Trouble was it was 97 when we landed. Color me thrilled to be under cloudy skies.
But I’ve stopped by to suggest you read this moving and heartbreaking essay about brothers published in The Sun and written by Doug Crandell. Every detail has weight and potency. I hope it inspires you like it inspired me.
As for Crandell, I’ve been spending time at his website trying to decide which one of his books I’m going to buy first. He’s just so good. Someone we can all learn from.
I disappeared into books when I was very young
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Aug•
04•25
Like many others who turned into writers, I disappeared into books when I was very young, disappeared into them like someone running into the woods. What surprised me was there was another side to the forest of stories and the solitude, and that I came out and met other people there. Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not so rare as some people think, but purpose or vocation which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of other that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone. ~ Rebecca Solnit from Literary Hub: Rebecca Solnit on a Childhood of Libraries and Wandering
Novels change us from within
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Aug•
04•25
In films, we are voyeurs, but in novels we have the experience of being someone else: knowing another person’s soul from the inside. No other form does that. And this is why sometimes, when we put down a book we find ourselves slighting altered as human beings. Novels change us from within. ~ Donna Tartt in this interview in Chatelaine
The Dream Keeper
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Jul•
11•25
Bring me all your dreams,
You dreamers.
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them in a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
~ Langston Hughes
…I want him to have a bit of magic in his prose style, a bit of unobtrusive poetry.
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Jun•
28•25
…I want him to have a bit of magic in his prose style, a bit of unobtrusive poetry. I want to have words and phrases really sing. And I like an attitude of wryness, realism, the sense of inevitability. I think that writing—good writing—should be like listening to music, where you pick out the themes, and properly analyzed, and his methods identified, and he will put in a little quirk, a little twist, that will be so unexpected that you read it with a sense of glee, a sense of joy, because of its aptness, even though it may be a very dire and bloody part of the book. ~ John McDonald
Let’s Study Art
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Jun•
13•25
Earlier I was posting on Facebook about how we live in terrifying times and when reality feels unbearable I launch into my coping methods, and I don’t know about you, but these days my coping tools are multiplying out of necessity. Which leads me to the art the internet offers up with such generosity. Because one is not always able to visit an art museum though I am overdue for a wander.
I landed on Pedro Roldán Molino and what a relief it was to be transported to the sunny and lovely climes of Spain via his exquisite modern impressionists paintings. And lucky for us, the man in prolific!
Besides the joy, solace, and joy that comes from viewing art, writers can also notice what artists notice. You simply gaze at the number of colors appear on a single cavnvas. Or how artists infuse light. How many colors they use. By the way, how many do you use? What do you notice and what if you set yourself a small goal to notice 5 new things (you can choose a larger or smaller number)?
I opened the curtains in a rear bedroom yesterday and stood and watched a bird frolic in my pretty pale blue birdbath–I need to take a photo of it, come to think of it. And he was diving and drinking and splashing and having a wee, grand time. It spurred me to go out and change the water and as I did so, the same bird hopped on a branch only feet away and started singing. I haven’t identified the species yet, but I know I’d never heard that song before.
Join me in collecting small joys and studying paintings. And let’s talk among ourselves about studying other art forms and how it feeds and inspires us. What it means to us.
Keep writing, keep noticing, have heart
Could I put those starry deeps…
Written By: Jessica Morrell
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Jun•
11•25
Could I put those starry deeps and lamplighted elms into words that sang like the nightwind now rinsing my senses and shivering the spring leaves? ~ Donald Newlove ~ I’ve written more about Newlove’s work here.
