Thirteen years ago, an injury brought Valerie’s career as a successful classical pianist in London to a halt. Several years later, she left her teaching job at a well-known conservatoire, and moved to California to study psychology in a unique postgraduate program. Not long off the plane, we met, and fell in love. And I did what any man does in love–I made her a website. Her piano teaching practice in Los Angeles bloomed as a result.
Moving to Ojai several years later meant mostly starting over with her teaching practice. But by that time she began to synthesize her experiences in the rigorous life of a musician with deep and meaningful training in psychology, counseling, and self-development. She began coaching other musicians from this perspective. As a result, I have seen Valerie bring a unique blend of wisdom, insight, humor, and practicality to help numerous musicians overcome resistance and blocks to achieve greater success, harmony, and balance in their work and in their lives.
Today I’m happy to announce a re-launch of Valerie’s website for free2create™ Life Coaching for Musicians. On the site, Valerie explains a bit about how she works, as well as how life coaching can actually be more effective than just career coaching. If you feel held back as a musician from living and playing at your best, or know someone else who does, I encourage you to get in touch.
While poetry is a product, being a poet is, to me, a worthwhile and lifelong pursuit. In my latest column for Read Write Poem, I dig beneath the question of writing daily, to answer how one can, in fact, engage life as a poet every day.
Some of the tactics may surprise you. Would you believe that actually limiting your writing time to shorter bursts can make you more prolific? Or that getting organized might make you more creative?
Check out this month’s Poetry Advice Column for more unusual approaches that just might help you live a bit more like a poet every day.
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Tagged Antaeus, Benjamin Scott Grossberg, Billy Collins, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Cathy Hong, Charles Harper Webb, David Kirby, Donald W. Baker, Gibbons Ruark, Grace Schulman, Hayden Carruth, Henri Cole, Ironwood, James Tate, Jane Hirshfield, Jean Valentine, Kim Addonizio, Kwame Dawes, Lance Larsen, Larry Levis, Li-Young Lee, Linda Gregerson, Lucille Clifton, Lynn Emanuel, Marilyn Nelson, Marvin Bell, Mary Karr, Michael Waters, Philip Levine, Poetry, Ralph Angel, Rebecca Seiferle, Richard Jackson, Robert Wrigley, Stanley Plumly, Stephen Dunn, Steve Kowitt, Tony Hoagland, WIlliam Matthews
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I have been flagging poems I like from The Pushcart Book of Poetry, and am now halfway through the anthology. It is excellent. Here is my list so far: Continue Reading “Shortlist from the Pushcart Book of Poetry (Part I)” »
Posted in Books, Poetry
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Tagged Allen Grossman, Antaeus, C.K. Williams, Chicago Review, Dave Smith, Derek Walcott, Galway Kinnell, Heather McHugh, Hilda Morley, Ironwood, James Wright, Jane Hirshfield, John Ashbery, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Mark Doty, Mary Oliver, Naomi Clark, Norman Dubie, Paris Review, Pattiann Rogers, Philip Appleman, Ruthellen Quillen, Seamus Heaney, Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz, Stephen Berg, Stephen Dobyns, Stephen Dunn, Susan Mitchell, Tess Gallagher, William Stafford
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As I have said before, some of my favorite revelations burst forth from the pairing of seemingly unrelated events. In this case, I had the pleasure of meeting Les McKeown on Friday during an all-day workshop he gave for our company on the business principles contained within his much-anticipated first book, Predictable Success. And just now, I finished drafting a column for the poetry social networking website Read Write Poem, about how to nurture and sustain a poetic mindset. The relationship between poetry and business is a topic that I have been simmering for some time. Recently, though, it has developed into a broth worth serving into words.
Predictable Success outlines the life cycle of any organization, and especially businesses, just as surely as a developmental psychologist can tell you, in broad terms, that you are going to be going through certain stages in your individual growth. And as just much as it can help to be told that you are not alone in the tumult of adolescence (or really any stage of life), this book is likewise a balm.
But Les goes further in explaining how businesses at any stage of growth can progress to a state where success becomes predictable. This remarkable set of practices strikes me as equally applicable to the development of an artist. Even as a business learns to create necessary structure, in such a way that it still fosters collaboration and innovation, so, too, does any artist dance between discipline and creative abandon in learning to create and sustain a life steeped in art. Continue Reading “Poetry, Business, Synthesis, and Les McKeown’s Predictable Success” »
I found myself in a meeting today with my boss and several other tech-savvy colleagues, discussing the educational and productivity-enhancing implications of various new technologies. When we got around to the iPad, I mentioned its potential to bring some sizzle to literature–possibly in ways the Kindle cannot. I whipped out my iPod Touch, fired up the new Poem Flow for iPhone application that just got released today, and we all sat around for a few minutes watching “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats elegantly fade, in measured lines, across my tiny screen. The implications for the larger iPad seemed obvious.
The implications of this technology for poetry, however, remain to be seen. I was contacted at the start of this month by Laura Often, Public Relations for Text Flows, the company that partnered with The Academy of American Poets to bring Poem Flow to life. She was interested in having me blog about their project. I’m not sure if she found me as a former technology blogger or a current poetry blogger, but nonetheless I took a look. Unfortunately, at that time, I could only see a brief Flash-based demonstration on their web site.
Holding my iPod Touch in my hands while it runs this application is a different experience. The font is lovely. The transitions between lines (and parts of lines) are thoughtful and well-executed. In fact, the deliberate slow-down of the reading experience seems to be one of the few actual enhancements I’ve seen technology make to literature–perhaps the only enhancement in this regard, since mostly when it comes to reading, technology encourages us to speed up. Continue Reading “Poem Flow for iPhone” »
