shamash says...

Forgetfulness: Amazing Animated Poetry

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Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, reads his poem "Forgetfulness" with animation by Julian Grey of Headgear. It's worth a view!

In Praise of the Bad Metaphor

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners.

Which one is YOUR favorite?

image via TechToons

My Husband's Back

My sister could have written this poem.
So could my mother and my grandmother.
Lamamamajama, too.

As for me: not yet.

But maybe someday.

Original image by shamash

One Word: Don't Think, Just Write

This site

Is really cool.

You have 60 seconds to write about ONE WORD

Don’t think,  just write.

Via moon river

Daiquiris with David Greenberg

One of David T. Greenberg’s published books has sold over a quarter of a million copies. His father, Jack Greenberg, was one of the attorneys who argued Brown v. Board of Education before the United States Supreme Court. 

Add a few papaya daiquiris, a dollop of green tea leaf salad, and a splash of good advice on writing from someone who’s “been there”, mix together in the Monsoon, and presto! You’ve got the recipe for deliciously inspiring evening, or at the very least to answer to the question What Ever Happened to Humpty Dumpty?

Waiting

Everytime I visit Moon River, I’m blown away by the images (like this one, a 2003 Lithograph on BFK Rives watercolour paper) that I find. 

South African artist Berni Searle could have entitled this series “Jump” or “Suicide” “Just after the Push” or “The Fall.” But no. Instead, she named it “Waiting”.

Why this title? Is the figure waiting to hit the water? Had he/she been waiting too long for someone, and decided to tie a large rock around the neck and jump into the ocean? Or is it a river? The Nile, perhaps? Does he/she like this fall, or hate it? Has he/she been pushed or thrown? Or, is the figure even FALLING?

The more I look at this image, the more I think it has a narrative: a before and an after.

Who do YOU think this person is? Why is he/she falling? And how does the title connect to the image?

Thoughts on the Writing Life

The Art of Disappearing

"Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time."

-NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

-original photo by shamash

Fall 2004 "Remembrance Day"

“Chase the Moon Across America”

I love that bitter-sweet feeling when a film moves you at the core, and it ends, and you’re left all full of the weight of truth and the an unbearable longing, and you just want to hug the playwright, the directors, and the actors, because it all comes together into one, great, big masterpiece.

And that’s when you hate that you saw it alone, because you want to talk about it, and you can’t.

Here are some great lines from Angels in

America

by Tony Kushner.

A Year in the Life of Shamash

This week, "Shamash Says" turned one year old. There was no candle on a cake, but instead a birth: to twins! Shamash stayed up till the wee hours of the morning creating two sister professional blogs, and they have all their fingers and toes.

"Shamash Says" began as an experiment to see if a non-tech-geek English teacher could maintain a personal blog. A year ago, Shamash barely knew what the word “blog” meant, yet alone how to act on one. So she entered the blogosphere a bit naïve, and completely unprepared for how blogging would revolutionize her life.

To this day, Shamash knows the names and faces of but two friends who blog. The rest: she met in the blogosphere.

Here’s what happened this past year.

Talk Doesn't Cook Rice

The real writer is one
who really writes…

Work is its own cure...

You have to
like it better than being loved.

- Marge Piercy

Shamash did a lot of talking this weekend when she summoned up the energy to break out of hermit-mode and re-introduce herself back into the tepid waters of Y. social life.

But, she quickly learned that “talk doesn’t cook rice”.