Dear all
I am sharing my process with you as I write and writing this is part of my process. I have some notes for my Arts Council funded Moonpause project that I’ve entitled Moon Memories. Ideally, I’d work on these more before sharing with the world but this is all the time I’ve got to write this week and creating an essay from my Moon Memories notes is next on my list, so here goes. This is an expansion on my notes, not yet a first draft, a becoming let’s say.
Because I like the brief, fragmented moon memories as a collection, I thought of writing a zuihitsu. But first, I need to understand what a zuihitsu is and how that could be different to a fragmented lyric essay. Or if, indeed, they are the same thing but under a different name. I want the form to influence the writing and for the writing to find the form it is most comfortable in.
A fragmented lyric essay is a type of segmented essay with white spaces allowing the reader to ‘pause, think, consider, and digest each segment before moving on to the next. Each section may contain something new, but still belong cogently to the whole,’ explains Randon Billings Noble in the introduction to her edited anthology of lyric essays, A Harp in the Stars. Other types of segmented essays may be known as collage or mosaic. ‘How you think of an essay may influence how you write it,’ says Billings Noble. ‘Citrus fruits come in segments; so do worms. Each segment is part of an organic whole. But a fragmented essay may be broken on purpose and a collage or mosaic deliberately glued together.’ I could number the segments, use an asterisk or subtitle or simply leave white space.
Zuihitsu is a Japanese technique that I’ve never tried breaking down for a workshop though we have often worked with lists, as these earlier Awen posts show: I come from…, I remember and Pleasure in making lists. It dates back to Sei Shōnagon who wrote The Pillow Book in around 1000AD. It is a collection of personal essays with thoughts, ideas and observations from her time as court lady to Empress Consort Teishi. American poet, Kimiko Hahn uses the technique in her book, The Narrow Road to the Interior (2006), named after haiku poet Basho’s book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
‘I like to think of zuihitsu as a fungus’ says Kimiko Hahn in an interview with New York poet Laurie Sheck for BOMB magazine, ‘not plant or animal, but a species unto itself. The Japanese view it as a distinct genre although its elements are difficult to pin down. There’s no Western equivalent, though some people might wish to categorise it as a prose poem or an essay.’
According to poet Cheryl Moskowitz, Zuihitsu is not a prose poem or an essay though it can resemble both: ‘To ‘follow the brush’ suggests a certain not-knowing of what will happen, that whatever might result from the process will be down to discovery rather than plan. There is a strong sense in zuihitsu writing that the creation of order depends on disorder. Zuihitsu demands as its starting point, juxtapositions, fragments, contradictions, random materials and pieces of varying lengths. I like this. This, it seems to me, is also how most things in life are, how people are, how thinking is, how poetry should be.
Separated out, these listings of thoughts, musings, opinions, overheard conversations, and complaints, can seem odd, trivial, random or unimportant and yet, strung together zuihitsu fashion, they take on a vital and wholly absorbing quality.’
I would love for these memory fragments to become a whole in some way, and I will work towards that by trying different techniques and reading other fragmented essays and zuihitsu, but for now, this is how they exist:
Moon Memories
In a creative writing class for beginners, A said, ‘at some point, a poet has to declare their relationship to the moon.’
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The first time I became aware that the moon rose just like the sun was on a beach in Thailand, drinking whisky with Z and M and a couple of local boys.
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I remember J telling the story of when she first realised that the feminine energy of the moon was merely a reflection of the masculine sun. We were in V’s garden at the edge of summer.
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Reading Goodnight Moon to the baby I took care of in Massachusetts when I was 18 the summer I left home. Saying ‘goodnight’ to her lamp, her bear, her curtains.
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Being told as a child (and not quite believing) that the waves in the sea are pulled by the moon. What is this magic?
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The fingernail moon as I drove to pick up E and got lost and cross as the road was closed and I had to turn back the way I came and I was more than an hour late.
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The phosphorescence glowed in Caswell that night. Where was the moon?
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Singing Harvest Moon to my six-week old baby lying on a sheepskin rug on the floor. Does he remember? Somehow.
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If we lived in the house we share a wall with, I would not be able to see the moon rise from the kitchen window. Or would I be able to at a different time of year? I still don’t understand how the moon moves.
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Tissue paper thin in the daytime blue sky, the waxing moon is large with an edge shaved off, almost full. I drop my heavy rubbish sack into the wheelie bin, close the lid and stare.
Writing Prompt
Declare your relationship to the moon in whichever way you like. Freewrite, make a poem or create a list of memory fragments like mine.
Reading Suggestions
Billings Noble, Randon. (2021). A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays. University of Nebraska Press.
Hahn, Kimiko. (2006). The Narrow Road to the Interior: Poems. WW Norton & Company Ltd.
Summer workshops
These are the workshops I have available this summer:
The Friday Retreat (nr. Barcombe): 9 June and 14 July.
Journalling Group (Chequer Mead): 20 June and 18 July.
Looking ahead, I have also listed my autumn workshops here, including new Mini Memoir courses on Zoom (or in person in Sussex).
I have a discount code if you spend more than £150 when booking, please use: HLW01 for 10% off.
Until next time…
Mel
This newsletter was created by Mel Parks, a writer, researcher and workshop facilitator based in Sussex, UK. Mel runs writing workshops locally and on Zoom and researches creativity in midlife as well as her personal connection to nature. She has been widely published and is currently working on a series of moon and plant-inspired essays.
Photo by filmplusdigital on Unsplash