The t-shirt duo- Seun Olubodun (Duke & Winston) & Nic Esposito (The Head & The Hand Press).

The crew here at The Head & The Hand was honored and thrilled to partner with Seun Olubodun, founder of Duke & Winston, in the creation of t-shirts celebrating our respective passion projects. Last night’s celebration of the finished product — extremely attractive, soft, and wearable shirts emblazoned with H&H’s beloved ampersand and Duke the Bulldog’s beloved profile — took the form of boozing and shooting the balmy breeze inside and out of the shop on 2nd Avenue. Winston Churchill’s craggy visage looked on as we toasted the sweet threads with Spodee wine and dodged the Duke’s attempts to liberate pepperoni slices and cheese wedges from the snack tray with his tongue. Croquet stances were demonstrated, hoodies for dogs were mistaken as outerwear for babies, and a good time was had by all. We also announced the winner of our Tales of Duke Contest, Patrick McNeil, for his awesome story. Thanks again to Seun and Krista for hosting us in their effortlessly cool, elegant space!

Wondering why we collaborated? Check out Nic’s notes on our collaboration here, and pictures from the night are below.

-Linda

p.s. One of us, let’s call him Bob, came very close to buying a bowtie and chickened out at the last minute. Thanks for broadening the definition of what is sartorially possible for friends of H&H and new fans of D&W.

The Duke, in all his glory.

Nic knighting the winner of our Tales of Duke Contest: Sir Patrick.

Shooting the breeze, literally.

The Duke made a friend at the party.

While Nathaniel Popkin’s first two books, Song of the City and The Possible City, were works of literary non-fiction, his third is a novel of historical fiction about the romantic movement that shook the foundations of the American art establishment. The tremors extend as far as the illustrious family of Charles Willson Peale, a live wire patriarch in no mood to step aside for the new school of artists and thinkers swimming in his wake in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Philadelphia.

The multi-pronged narrative of Lion and Leopard spirals outward from the demise of John Lewis Krimmel, an immigrant German painter whose life was cut short before he could explore the full breadth and width of his potential as an artist and visionary. His works formed a bridge between romanticism’s wonder and the neoclassical realism of portraitists like Charles Willson Peale and his formidable progeny, eccentrically (and perhaps cruelly) named after European masters.

After years immersed in the drama of these clashes between father and son(s), peers and rivals, lovers and mentors, Nathaniel has emerged with a brilliant manuscript that illuminates for the reader what life was like during a time when, as one character memorably puts it, American culture was in its infancy:

Respect, and therefore enduring power, will have to wait until there was such a thing as American culture. Name an empire whose power hasn’t emanated from the richness and intricacy of its culture. Ottoman? Persian? Roman? What is the power of the Ottoman Empire? Is it the ferocious sultans? No! It is the quiet agony of the manuscripts, the fables of love and longing and the coloring of the illuminations. Without all that, the sultans would have no followers and without followers no mercenaries and no army!  

Much like the feeling we experienced after going public with our partnership with Adrian Bonenberger, we are once again astounded and humbled to have added such a talent to our author roster. Nathaniel Popkin has made his mark as a writer who combines a strong journalistic voice with defined literary grace, and we can’t wait to work with him as he delves into narrative fiction with Lion and Leopard.

Both Nathaniel and Adrian will be sharing their insights on the road toward publication “from the workbench” soon.

To learn more about Nathaniel Popkin, please visit www.theheadandthehand.com/nathaniel-popkin.

-Nic and Linda

As part of our collaboration with Duke & Winston, we have a joint t-shirt and are running a contest to give one out in exchange for a “Tale of Duke.” The contest, which runs until the end of this week, is to submit a story on Duke, the famed dog of clothing store. The picture of The Duke to the right and Duke & Winston’s mantra says it all. Our founder Nic Esposito was feeling inspired by the collaboration and wrote a tale of his own below. Learn how to submit your tale here, and enjoy Nic’s story below.

The Duke, as he’s known now, was not always called The Duke. Much speculation has surrounded his Christian name. Legend has it that he was actually Reginald Milkbone, the son who escaped his family fortune for the love of a peasant Irish Setter. Others speculate that he emigrated to England as a Enrique Purina, heir to the famous canine cuisine franchise. Whatever the case, it wasn’t long before his charm and grace ingratiated him into the halls of Parliament, taking up post as the parlour dog for none other than Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself.

This was controversial among the breeds of dogs that were enlisted into the Royal Service. The terriers were indignant that such a lethargic, brutish breed could ever keep up with the ever energetic Mr. Churchill. The poodles felt he lacked the good looks to serve as the face of the Empire. The collies felt he lacked the intelligence.

And they may have been correct. That was until one day, as the young scamp of a dog was lying on Mr. Churchill’s bearskin rug that adorned the entrance to his parlour room. The dog was just falling into the slumber of his afternoon nap, when his ears heard footsteps coming up the hall. Now, the young dog was always a friendly creature who was never bashful to lay a slobbery lick onto the face of a foreign dignitary or even the Queen herself. There was only one breed of human for whom the wrath of his inner-beast could not be suppressed, and that was the mail courier.

For the few months he had been in the Prime Minister’s service, he had bitten three couriers, chased one almost to the Thames and had forced three others to seek early retirement. Although this caused a stir in the budding labor party, Mr. Churchill found it quite amusing. But on this particular day, Mr. Churchill had also fallen into the slumber of an afternoon nap. So the dog found it strange that the courier did not ring for his master, nor did he make his presence known as he crept into the room. Slowly, the man was about to set a parcel onto the Prime Minister’s desk, when out of the shadow of the book shelf a flash of pearly white fangs and a head like a sledge hammer erupted onto the courier. Without time to set the package down, the man ran out of the room, down the hallway to where our hero gave chase.

The courier took a left and then a right and then another left until he was caught on the balcony overlooking the sitting garden. He came to a stop anticipating his next move when the dog lunged out onto the courier knocking him and his parcel over the wall. When the courier finally hit the ground a large explosion accompanied. Suddenly, the entire staff was on the scene, surveying the blast site. When they looked up, all they saw was the face of our hero, his tongue hanging out as he panted to catch his breath. It took them all a second to understand what had happened.

When they finally did, a man yelled up, “God, he saved the duke,” to which the entire staff began to shout the same slogan. On the fourth chant, the dog felt a firm hand press on his head. When he looked up, he saw his master. The entire staff quieted, allowing the Prime Minister to say, “God, save the Duke.” The entire staff erupted in applause. And that was the day the Duke was asked to share the moniker of his illustrious master.

-Nic Esposito

I stood for a long time tracking the slow drift of clouds, great fluffy masses sheared flat along their bottom edges like they were melting on a hot griddle.

Fluffy masses sheared flat.

They rode along the seawall, Marie’s skirt and the man’s jacket flapping erratically in the warm wind. The cycle picked up speed until they seemed to be darting into the horizon, an orthogonal razor across Valera’s eye.

Rachel Kushner’s sentences are often so technically airtight and yet so lyrical and full of true, raw emotion that I had to force myself to take breaks while reading The Flamethrowers just to prolong the experience of reading. The protagonist, Reno, is a girl who rides motorcycles, skis, films, photographs, is photographed, falls in love, breaks land speed records, and marches in protest among militants, all in pursuit of a universal need to feel at home.

There is a tension that comes from Kushner’s fresh, masterful descriptions of people and places being filmed by a gifted protagonist and the knowledge that the film can never be viewed, not only because it is fictional (obviously) but because at one point in the action the camera is lost. In a crowd. After recording a scene of such pathos and import that the reader is stricken by the loss as much as the filmmaker. Stricken by the loss, stricken by knowledge that the “film” is locked away in the brilliant prison of Rachel Kushner’s brain.

Reno’s art is so compelling because knows herself — she is adventurous but not heedless, beautiful but not vain, smart but not aloof. She is cruelly alone but not a victim. She is resourceful and curious and uses what’s available to not only carve a niche for herself but to move forward. She is also marginal, stumbling into work as a “China girl,” the good-looking-but-not-beautiful models whose photographs appear in the leader of a film so that the lab technicians have a reference for the right hue of Caucasian flesh. She is never at the center but always traveling through, often at breakneck speeds. Her type of fearlessness is new, a surprise, and worth committing to memory is a reference for the right hue of original.

–Linda

More at: http://rachelkushner.com/flamethrowers.html.

On Wednesdays, The Head & The Hand takes you to The Workbench to hear from writers all over. In this blog series you’ll learn about authors and their craft – the creative process behind their writing.  Learn how to submit your Workbench entry here, and read below about Caleb Bollenbacher’s inspiration through senses and daily absorption of fiction.

When I first heard about synesthesia I fervently wished that I had it. It’s the only mental disorder I’ve ever wished for, and I’m pretty sure that it was a one-time thing. I certainly don’t plan on wishing for any other interruptions in what little bit of order I have in my life.

You see I’m a writer, and as a writer order seems to be an elusive animal. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

For those of you who don’t know, synesthesia is a neurological condition that’s essentially a sensory remix. Colors, sounds, numbers, all mesh together in odd associations that don’t seem to make a lot of sense to the uninitiated. While I probably don’t have this particular brand of sense confusion, it’s oftentimes as close as I can come to explaining how I write when people ask. Writing fiction is, after all, just one giant, beautiful mess of synthesis. “There’s nothing new under the sun.” What is new is how we mix it all together and how much of ourselves we’re brave enough to throw in.

So that’s oftentimes where my process begins: bombarding my senses in order to create the perfect blend of inspiration. More often than not this means music, but it can really be anything. I’ll go through art blogs to find paintings with just the right blend of color or imagery to elicit the feelings I’m looking for. Sometimes I just need to sit in front of the TV and watch a movie that will get me to the right place. Music is the big constant though. Usually whenever I’m writing I’ll create playlists that build scenes for me, because when I hear songs I see them in my head. They aren’t just words and instruments; they’re moving pictures in my mind, and the right song is a window into the particular moments in a character’s life. I often refer to it as a “color by number” approach. You remember what those were like in our childhood coloring books: it starts out a black and white, lifeless corpse, but by associating the right colors with their corresponding numbers on the picture (there’s the synesthesia again) things start to look like they’re supposed to. For me songs are the numbers that unlock the right colors.

But none of that matters until I have the inklings of a story. That’s where things get harder…and also easier: harder, because I hate standing still, but easier because part of the burden is shared. When I need a story I just ask. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus states “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” I don’t see any reason why that can’t apply to me needing a story. And so I ask. I sit in stillness, and ask. I beg if necessary, and if I really am in need I don’t quit until I get what I’m looking for. When I first decided to write a novel I stood in the Gulf of Mexico for an hour getting hit by waves and refusing to leave until I got a story to write. And then it was there. Another time I made the mistake of asking as I was going to sleep and I had to get out of bed to frantically regurgitate the first several pages of a short story onto the page. A lot of people who read my work might find that a bit strange, considering that what I write doesn’t necessarily have an obvious connection to my faith, but it’s hard (read: impossible) to take credit for a fully formed story just popping into my head.

Once I’m writing, what’s most clutch is that I just do it. It’s not something I can take a break from. I get to know characters. I spend time with them until they start to speak. And I listen to hear when someone around me might be speaking the words that are supposed to come from a character. I read like my life depends on it. When I’m writing screenplays I’m reading screenplays (and watching movies). When I’m writing novels I’m reading novels. The whole time I’m taking notes on what works and what doesn’t. What I loved and what I could have done better. Sometimes writing doesn’t take the form of typing or picking up a pen, but it does take time. There’s no such thing as an “aspiring” writer. You’re either writing or you’re not.

There aren’t days off…and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

-Caleb Bollenbacher

Learn more about Caleb Bollenbacher at www.AmericanBanshee.com.

See Caleb’s comic work here, and short stories here.

One of our wood-burned work desks we’ll be moving to the new place.

Our final Workshop Tuesday at 2031 Frankford Avenue was memorable for a few reasons. The first was the impromptu reading that our workshop writers gave to honor six months worth of some great writing and talking shop. At the risk of getting too sentimental, I must admit that I was incredibly affected not just by the great writing that has been created in our workshop, but by the community of writers that the workshop has forged.

The other reason for the importance of this workshop was that for half an hour during the writing hours, I had to sneak out to sign the lease on our new space! (please excuse the exclamation point, but this is exciting). After forging an identity of opening up about our creative process through our blog, we apologize if we have been uncharacteristically cryptic and coy when talking about our new space. But we literally did not sign the lease until the night before we had to be out of our old space.

Our new workshop is just a few doors down at 2011 Frankford Avenue in a warehouse that currently houses a printing press operation on the first floor. We’re excited that we can now slightly make good on having the word “Press” in our company title. But we’re even more excited about the opportunity to transform the layout and the structure of the workshop to a model that will serve more writers, with more open hours, to ultimately produce more great writing.

When we first imagined the ideal workshop, we pictured two separate rooms: one room for our publishing work space, and another room for our writers. So it was fairly surreal to walk into our new space for the first time and see the exact layout of our vision. We’ll be keeping the workshop closed for the next two weeks so that we can paint and build more furniture (I was just at Provenance buying silver maple wood for six new desks that are going to be beautiful). But we will be back open in mid-May with an opening party on what we are now calling Workshop Wednesday.

Better alliteration is not the only improvement to our workshop nights. Starting this month we will finally open up our membership system to allow for writers to utilize our space during the week. We will be updating the website soon to post our membership rates and hours. So keep an eye out for that as well.

As always, we are so appreciative of the support our workshop has received and the great work it has produced, and we look forward to continuing to serve the great writers of Philadelphia.

-Nic Esposito and The Head & The Hand Press

Every Friday, The Head & The Hand Press shares “Rust Belt Blueprints,” a series that maps out the production phase of the The Rust Belt Rising Almanac before its release in spring 2013. Below, our Editorial Director Linda gives a peek into the interview of a store owner and an artist in the Rust Belt city of Philadelphia, a piece of the Rust Belt region explored in our forthcoming almanac. Enjoy.

Denis Boyce, owner of the art & antique store Karlie Corporation on Frankford Avenue in Philadelphia, recently allowed me to interview him about his father, John Boyce, for a piece in Press’s forthcoming The Rust Belt Rising Almanac. John is the artist and mathematician responsible for creating the welded metal sculptures that grace the garden at the corner of Frankford Avenue and Mercer Street in Philadelphia’s neighborhood of Fishtown. At one point during the interview, Denis mentioned how close his dad was with Arturo Ho, a young artist who used to work as a framer in the store. Denis told me a story about the day Arturo admitted how much he loved working with him and that he could see himself doing it forever. Denis’s response to this heartfelt declaration? You’re fired, kid. He wanted Arturo to understand, in no uncertain terms, that he was too talented to continue to work as a framer — he and John saw the potential in not only Arturo’s artistic ability but his ability to work and connect with others.

“History of Chinatown” by Arturo Ho, 10th and Winter Sts., SE corner, Philadelphia, PA

Luckily for us, and countless young people in surrounding communities, Arturo did leave the shop. His mosaics and murals are powerful expressions of themes that people experience and long for every day. He often works with students to create his art, and this is where the threads of our respective stories begin to overlap. Arturo created a mosaic mural with the students of the Melvin J. Berman Academy in Rockville, MD, inspired in part by the director of the Media Center’s love of Marc Chagall. One of the scenes in the mural depicts a floating woman, just like the one in the mural in Mark Mena’s Almanac story, “I and the Village.”

I was struck by the connection after reading about how much the mural meant to each Berman Academy student who contributed a tile, the same feeling of empowerment that drives the young protagonist in Mark’s story. I think we can all relate to that excitement, the feeling we get when someone hands us the raw tools of any trade and says, have at it. I trust you to make your mark. I feel very fortunate to know, if not the man himself, some of the ripple effects created by John Boyce’s generosity and creativity. Arturo was kind enough to share some memories of his friend with us, written below.

When I first saw the metal sculptures that Mr. Boyce had made for the Karlie storefront, I remember being inspired. I was in awe at the quality of the metal sculptures. He opened his doors to me and allowed me to learn with him. I would come up to see him what seemed like every Saturday during the summers to create and learn welding, stained glass making, gardening, photography, making breads, yogurt, even creating marionettes for my summer arts camp that I taught in Southwest Philadelphia. He gave me guidance and never hesitated to show me techniques for my own exploration of the arts. Mr. Boyce was the most generous person I have ever met.

He was also the kindest person whom I have ever met. There was nothing he didn’t know and nothing made him feel better than to share the knowledge he had with the people he met in life. I was one fortunate guy to have met him at the right time. My life changed forever because our friendship. When I teach my children, I sometimes hear myself saying, “Mr. Boyce taught me that.”

On Saturdays, I would join Mr. and Mrs. Boyce at their favorite event of the day: yard sales. There were so many finds. If ever I needed something for my children, we would find it. We would hit all the yard sales, and I will never forget how many items we were able to fit in his car. Afterwards, he would serve us the best meal of homemade buttermilk pancakes, which became my favorite dish to share with my friends and family.

Our deepest thanks to Arturo and Denis. We at The Head & The Hand hope you enjoy the interview as much as we enjoyed learning about John.

–Linda

Seun Olubodun & The Duke

As his owner Seun Olubodun later admitted to me, Duke was probably set off by the cap with the ear flaps I was wearing, not to mention that I was peering through the window with my face to the glass trying to look into Seun’s shop. Seun said I shouldn’t do that again but he did compliment me on the hat.

As I stepped in, Duke settled down and Seun and I resumed our conversation we had begun a few months before at a business conference we both attended. After listening to Seun speak on a panel at the conference, I approached him and told him that we should collaborate. I’m not sure if he thought that a collaboration made sense at the conference, but the first thing he said to me after explaining The Duke’s actions that day in the shop was, “Yeah, this makes sense. We have the same aesthetic.”

The aesthetic Seun referred to was The Head & The Hand’s commitment to a handcrafted feel that we strive to make apparent on both our print and digital publications. As we’ve made a priority from day one, we want to do justice to the thoughtful quality of writing we produce with an equally well crafted look and feel to our presentation. And we were happy to hear that someone with Seun’s eye had taken notice. Likewise, Duke & Winston has made its mission to jumpstart the city’s once great textile and apparel industry. Duke & Winston creates casual clothes for its customers who favor substance and refinement – a business model we appreciate greatly.

Duke & Winston and The Head & The Hand Men’s Collaboration Tee

We were also very inspired by Duke & Winston’s dedication to promoting other small enterprises in the city through their collaboration t-shirts. As you will see with the design for our collaboration, we wanted to portray an image that was a bit of a departure from the classical script of our publications and the clean design of Seun’s previous t-shirts. I feel that this design is much more rooted in the tradition of street art that I feel is representative of both Seun’s and my approach to cobbling together enough resources to make our respective visions reality.

Duke & Winston and The Head & The Hand Women’s Collaboration Tee

As we put this t-shirt out into the world, we intend to keep the collaboration going by also creating some great writing. Starting today, we will be accepting submissions for what we are calling “Tales of Duke”. These stories are intended to take a look at the Dog behind the Duke. An example could be an exploration of the tactical training he received as part of the Queen’s Royal Air Force that allowed him to target my leg with such precision. Another example could be about Duke’s early years as a Winston Churchill’s top hunting aid. Or those shockwaves he sent through the monarchy as he was caught in mid hump with the Duchess of Cornwall’s jack russell terrier.

Duke is a dog that would give the famed “World’s Most Interesting Man” a run for his pesos. So we look forward to the many tales that you, dear readers, may have. Please keep all submissions to under 500 words and email them to info@theheadandthehand.com. The winner will get a free tee, and will be announced at our celebratory event: “The Elements of Style – A Duke & Winston and The Head & The Hand Press Collaboration.”

And if you would like to see the shirt, please check it out the men’s cut at http://duke-winston.com/head1.htm and the women’s cut at http://duke-winston.com/head2.htm. We thank Duke & Winston for partaking in this collaboration, and we can’t wait to read your Tales of Duke.

-Nic

I’m in D.C. about to attend my grandmother’s interment ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. She was a WWII nurse who traveled all over Europe and North Africa during the conflict, at one point witnessing General Patton retrieve and consume a piece of cheese from a garbage can, telling the assembled company that throwing away food was a waste. She could also recite poetry “by rote.” She loved quoting everyone from W.B. Yeats to Ogden Nash. Even toward the end of her life when she began suffering from Alzheimers, she would sometimes be inspired to recite a stanza or two of James Lowell’s “The Vision of Sir Launfal.”

I admired that in her (that and so many other things) and wish committing lines of poetry to memory were more common among non-poets. I like to think she would have enjoyed all of the poems we included in the Rust Belt Rising Almanac, and I know one in particular would have made her think of Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha”* and the “Shores of Gitche Gumee / Of the shining Big-Sea-Water.”*

“Great Lakes’ Living Legacy” (C)  Karla Linn Merrifield, 2012

Karla Linn Merrifield’s poem “Ballad for August 27, 2012” takes place on the storied shores of Lake Erie, minus the bountiful hauls of sturgeon and herring. She focuses on the Mummery Brother’s trawler, a “ghost boat of the Great Lakes,” packed with “hopeful ice.”  A variety of factors from pollution to the parasitic sea lamprey have contributed to the industry’s decline. Indigenous species of fish like the blue pike and the deepwater cisco are now extinct.

A little bit more background gleaned from a great teaching resource about the lakes:

“Today, only pockets of the once large commercial fishery remain. For Canada, the Lake Erie fishery remains prosperous, and represents nearly two-thirds of the country’s total Great Lakes harvest. In the United States, the commercial fishery is based on lake whitefish, smelt, bloater chubs and perch, and on alewife for animal feed. Commercial fishing is limited by a federal prohibition on the sale of fish affected by toxic contaminants. The trend in the U.S. is to reduce the pressure on the fishery by restricting commercial fishing to trap nets that harvest species selectively, without killing species preferred by recreational anglers.”

Merrifield’s poem is a beautiful tribute to a disappearing way of life, and we at The Head & The Hand Press are grateful for the opportunity to share a glimpse of that legacy.

Now go pick a and poem and memorize it.

-Linda

*Prior to learning more about the Great Lakes Fishing industry and its struggles, I didn’t realize that Longfellow had erroneously cast Hiawatha as the heroine of his epic poem about the Ojibwe, the Indian tribe that once lived along the shores of Lake Superior. Despite the mistake, the poem was a huge success, selling 10,000 copies a month in Boston alone.

Karla Linn Merrifield recently received the Dr. Sherwin Howard Award for the best poetry published in Weber – The Contemporary West in 2012. A seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, she has had 300+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has nine books to her credit, the newest of which chronicles the American West: Lithic Scatter and Other Poems (Mercury Heartlink). She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com). Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at www.karlalinn.blogspot.com.

We’re pleased to present the second entry from a new series called “The Workbench,” a round of blogs that will explore different writers’ creative processes. Click here to learn how to submit your creative process and read below about John McEntire’s search for inspiration, word-craft and personal triumph.

A dear friend asked me about inspiration, a question I suppose I should have expected, as any would-be writer might foresee being asked, especially after many years of arrogantly passing manuscripts across the tavern table to her and demanding her cannons of criticism. To her boundless credit, she is a Howitzer, a surgeon of shell shock. She has ruthlessly ripped the worst of my words from the page with precision, yet with enviable grace and gusto, and defended me at my most vulnerable, even outnumbered against the entirety of Hell’s unlisted level: The Writers’ Circle. (At the risk of sounding dramatic, I didn’t care for many of those hungry buzzards.)

While I should have in the abstract anticipated being asked about inspiration, what I did not expect was her actual interest in my answer. I would have considered her somewhat of an expert in the subject. She is nearly limitless in energy and interesting opinion, and I feared my answer might disappoint. Never being one for shame, however, I decided to give her my best shot in defining from whence my word-craft comes. Pretentious, yes I know, but after all, I have given worse responses; for instance, my disdain of Michael Jackson, or my religious genocide of poetics before the First World War, or my defense of Early Times Bourbon.

I wish I could list an inspiring stream of subjects from my poems—the ghost bones of cigarette smoke marching through fence posts, the marvel of the four-colored Christ, the pewter musician ringing fire and liquid, the cartoonist sketching in a strip club, the fifth of half-corked Cocci floating lonesome sipping chlorine and pool light—all of which would guide you to the same epiphany: ‘Damn! That guy must know something!’ But I can’t. The fact is, those are just images you will try to ascribe meaning to, and probably do so much more successfully profoundly than I ever did. So after relatively minimal thought, I realized I don’t have much inspiration.

I have a beautiful wife who I don’t write about nearly enough to come close to narrowing the gap between her league and mine. I have senselessly devoted friends (except for that one time one of The Head & The Hand girls left me for dead to sort out an undeserved misunderstanding in a Central Texas bar…). I am not as depressed as my cynical sense of humor suggests, nor am I as naïve as my romanticism ascribes. I live a gratefully blessed life, yet no words spout from the fountains of what satisfies me. Nothing I seek in life drives me to shape it into stanzas. I am no Plath or Ginsberg, transcribing voices of commanding power within myself. But neither am I hopeless in my acceptance of that.

I may not write from a divine gift or wage word-war for a righteous cause; I may not be compelled by a feeling in the twilight hours that can only be exorcised by expression; I may not be inspired to catalogue prophesies or political disaster around me; but I might—just might—sacrifice swiftly atrophying time to put pen to paper for the perception of an image witnessed. Not because any image in and of itself is inspiring, but rather because the witnessing of an image inspires.

To be privy to a moment of intimacy or intrinsic understanding removed from requirement of judgment is sublime. This is where personal triumph is attained; not in placing the final punctuation on a story or in the meticulous assembly of mediocre rhyme and meter—for those are only the outlines of puzzle pieces pressed together for amusement. Those Lego bricks writers enjoy sticking together are entertaining, fun, and above all, rewarding and necessary in their own right, but only from a place of true understanding—the kind that cannot be handed to you in an expensive textbook or someone else’s owners’ manual. That action of moving forward, discovering the next, whatever it may be, comes to me from watching where I and others have been. I strive to write what I see around me in the hope that the inspiration comes after.

-John McEntire

John McEntire is a poet and longtime friend of The Head & The Hand Marketing Assistant, Claire Margheim. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Click here to read one of his favorite blogs he’s contributed to and here to read one of his poems.