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WILSON WYATT JR

Tag Archives: Writing

Inspiration . . .the muse is always present

24 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by Wilson Wyatt Jr. in Inspiration, Photography, Sunrise, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Creativity, Inspiration, Muse, Nature, Patience, Photography, Sunrise, Writing

Inspiration – Click on the image for a larger view.

Often we hear, “I need inspiration,” or, “I’m waiting for the muse.”  It’s as if we wait long enough it will come to us. Creativity is not a passive endeavor.  Just around us, perhaps only a few steps away, there is always something that can inspire us.  If we look, it will be there, waiting for us, like it always has.  We need to take that first step.

I find inspiration in a beautiful photograph or painting, in the lines of a poem, or the words of a great story.  I find it by walking outdoors to capture the sunrise or sunset or a flower in bloom, or to hear the rustling of deer in the forest.  It’s also present in the innocent faces of laughing children, or the wisdom imbedded in the wrinkles of an elder.  It is evident in remarkable deeds of kindness by one human being toward another. If we stop just long enough to see it, inspiration will be there, waiting…patiently…for our embrace.

The Value of a Literary Review…along the road to good writing

07 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by Wilson Wyatt Jr. in The Delmarva Review, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Fiction, Literary Arts, Literary Writing, Nonfiction, Paul Soderberg, Poetry, Publishing, Secret World of Literary Reviews, The Delmarva Review, Writing

The Delmarva Review, vol.5 – 27 authors, nine states, D.C., and three other countries

The Delmarva Review published its fifth annual edition of prose and poetry this week, rising competently at the far end of the writing spectrum, known to discerning readers as literary writing.  I say the “far end” of the spectrum, because it is the place reserved for literature as an art.  This is the place where art and craft combine in the writer’s quest for excellence…aspired to by many, but attained by few.

That sounds intimidating, and perhaps it is to some writers.  But to others it is a rewarding journey.  A literary journal like The Delmarva Review attracts hundreds and hundreds of submissions for the few that are finally published.  Of course, there are space limitations.  For the aspiring and persevering writer, publication in the review is a well-deserved achievement.  Even the best writers receive rejections, but selection for publication is always an occasion to be celebrated.

The Delmarva Review is one of some 3,300 literary reviews around the world.  That sounds like a lot.  But, when you consider there are over 200,000 commercial magazines in production, literary reviews are, indeed, at the small end of the spectrum. It’s interesting that they are growing in numbers, not diminishing.

For those who would like to know more about literary reviews, their purpose and history, I recommend an excellent article by an experienced editor-writer, Paul Soderberg, “The Secret World of Literary Journals,” available to read online at: http://thefeatheredflounder.com/2012/05/the-secret-world-of-literary-journals/

Today, as I and my talented editorial associates stuff envelopes with copies of  The Delmarva Review, to be on their way to readers, this concludes a year of difficult work. “Difficult” because it has been a year of choosing the final stories, essays, and poetry to publish in our fifth edition.  However, like for the authors, it is an occasion to celebrate.  The reward is treating our writers with the respect they deserve and producing a literary journal of quality for readers with high expectations.

We will now wait…and wait…for the comments…for our own critical review.  For you see, even the editors can face rejection.

Of interest to writers, the submission period for the sixth issue of the Review is from November 1, 2012 to February 28, 2013. We publish a print edition as well as a downloadable digital edition, available at Amazon.com. You can see the website for copies, guidelines and a submission link: www.delmarvareview.com

As executive editor of The Delmarva Review, I am thankful for the remarkable talent and generous spirit of all the people who worked on this edition.  All contributed as volunteers.  They include fiction editors Margot Miller and Harold Wilson, nonfiction editor George Merrill, poetry editors Amanda Newell and the late John Elsberg, managing editor Mala Burt, designer Laura Ambler,  copyeditor Jeanne Pinault, and our prose readers, who help to discover the best work. Thank you, as well, to our publisher, the Eastern Shore Writers Association, a nonprofit organization that supports and believes in the literary arts.

Back and front cover – The Delmarva Review, vol. 5  (Click on image to enlarge)

Memories come on little cat feet…remembering Carl Sandburg

29 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by Wilson Wyatt Jr. in Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Carl Sandburg, Chicago, Edward Steichen, Family, Fog, Kentucky, Louisville, Memories, Museum of Modern Art, The Family of Man, Writing

September Fog - "It sits on silent haunches...and then moves on." (Click on image for full size)

Louisville, Kentucky 1954 – Carl Sandburg sat in the white Adirondack chair on our wrap-around front porch.  I was too young to know more about him than he was a famous writer, and he wrote “Fog,” which I could recite as a ten-year-old.  My older sisters were more aware of his work. We sat at his feet as he read to us.

His thinning white hair stood from his pale scalp like slender feathers, playing in the summer sun.  He wore a white shirt that hung loose from his skeletal frame.  When he smiled, his whole mouth opened and spread across his face, hinged from ear to ear.  He reminded me, as a boy, of the comedian, Joey Brown, who could fit a baseball inside his mouth.

He was a gentle man, but when he spoke, it was with a certain authority.  Words came from his mouth as long, slow syllables.  His rich, mellow voice trembled slightly, hanging onto certain words, accenting them with importance.  There was a musical cadence to his speech.  He punctuated sentences with silence, waiting for the words to take hold in space.  His open collar exposed a pronounced Adam’s apple, which moved up and down his stalk-like neck…syllable by syllable.

When he finished reading to us, he removed several pages of white note paper from a folder.  They contained handwritten words, scratched out in liquid black ink.  I couldn’t make them out.  There were lines and arrows and underlines, with other words scribbled along the sides.  He signed the pages and handed them to my oldest sister.  “I am dedicating this to you,” he said.

I later learned that those pen-scratched words composed the “Prologue” to the book The Family of Man.  It was a collection of an era of photography, inscribed “The greatest photographic exhibition of all time,” edited by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art.  The museum published it the following year, in 1955. My sister treasured those handwritten pages, and we all treasure the memory.

In the years since my childhood, when I see a fog bank covering the water and landscape, I often think of Carl Sandburg’s Fog, coming “on little cat feet…looking over harbor and city, on silent haunches.”  When I visit Chicago, I think of his Chicago, “Hog Butcher for the world…Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat…City of the Big Shoulders.”  I can hear his voice uttering the words, slowly, syllable by syllable.  And, when I read the Prologue to The Family of Man, I see him, sitting there, with a boy at his feet, as he speaks with a measured cadence:

“The first cry of a newborn baby in Chicago or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or Rangoon, has the same pitch and key, each saying, “I am! I have come through! I belong! I am a member of the family.”   

It comes to me now, looking back. It all makes sense.

A writer’s voice and words have an inherent telepathy, replaying a memory, only with permanence.  The uttered words once scribbled down with liquid black ink on paper later become a gift, in the future, for all to read.  They live on, in time, from one place to another, one person to the next, indefinitely.

Gallery

Some memories of Yosemite

07 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by Wilson Wyatt Jr. in Photography, Uncategorized, YOSEMITE - CATCHING THE LIGHT

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Beauty, Bridalveil Fall, Catching the Light, El Capitan, Half Moon, mountains, Photography, Writing, Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley

This gallery contains 6 photos.

“Give nature time and she will dazzle us with her power and beauty.  In life’s universal sense, time is infinite, …

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The Morning Light

20 Saturday Aug 2011

Posted by Wilson Wyatt Jr. in Photography, The Morning Light, Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Beauty, Chesapeake Bay, Creativity, Dreams, Freedom, Morning Light, Morning on Leadenham Creek, Silence, Time, Writing

Inspiration begins with the morning light, when colors are newborn, freshly painted from the sky, skipping across the landscape, carefree, before they bake in the life of day.

– The Morning Light, Copyright 2009 by Wilson Wyatt Jr.   (Click on image for full size)

Did you hear the first bird wake?  The crickets retreat?  This is that private time, the silence between sleep and awake.

This is my time…before thought or duty…when the inner spirit is renewed, opening like a flower, knowing not the past or future, sensing only the images before me, freshly cast, still wet with dew, uncluttered, unaffected.

This is that euphoric time, welcoming creativity, a time to write, seek new images, and shape thoughts never dreamed before.

The morning light…such freedom, such beauty.

Sharing Words and Images Beyond Boundaries

06 Saturday Aug 2011

Posted by Wilson Wyatt Jr. in Photography, Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Beauty, Behavior, Boundaries, Chesapeake Bay, Creative Spirit, Creativity, Discovery, Feelings, Freedom, Images, Knowledge, Limitations, Photography, Sunrise, Words, Writing

Writing and photography are bridges transcending human boundaries.  Some people would attach rules to them, but once seen or read, beauty is uncontainable.  It is unleashed.  Each of us has that freedom, within our minds, to touch our creative spirit.   Words and images allow us to connect as people, to share expression and understand feelings of fear, loss, love, and happiness, regardless of where we live or who we are.  The power is within us.

Morning Sunrise, Chesapeake Bay - Copyright 2010 by Wilson Wyatt Jr. (Click on image for full size)

We limit ourselves with boundaries.  They can be our homes, our towns, our countries…perhaps the color of our skin, our gender or age, our beliefs or language.  It’s a natural behavior.  All animals have it. Yet, we have choices as human beings.  We posture ourselves as superior forms of life on Earth, striving to better ourselves…searching for peace, yet starting wars…building great buildings, then tearing them down…writing laws to protect us from each other…talking about purity, then polluting the air, water and soil…seeking truth, but not recognizing the truths around us…holding ourselves better than others, while suffering the same weaknesses.  Recognizing how we aspire to improve, it’s mysterious why we conjure so many boundaries, preventing discovery and creativity, limiting our horizons. Is it knowledge we fear?  Perhaps it is fear, itself, that guides so many…the fear of what we don’t know.

This site is meant to explore creativity beyond boundaries, through words and images, while seeking understanding and connections with everyone. Welcome.

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