I watched the film about Garrison Keillor on American Masters the other night.

Very enjoyable. I think GK is a talented, intelligent and funny guy. A bit sentimental and cornball perhaps, but I think he sincerely believes in the values. He made a couple of interesting remarks in the course of the film (a lot of it was him talking over footage following him around in the course of preparing and presenting APHC). One was that in order to make a show like APHC work, it had to be pretty light-hearted entertainment, and in order for light-hearted entertainment to work, it had to be heartfelt and had to be seen to be heartfelt, therefore the main production value driving the show (I'm paraphrasing he didn't use the term production value or heartfelt) was for the participants to be having fun themselves, ergo the goal is always to be entertaining themselves.

Another interesting thing he said was that writing (he is primarily a writer, in his own and in my opinion) is discovery. "We write in order to find out what we think." "Writing what you know is a starting point."

Mulling that in conjunction with words from Michael Chabon and Stephen King, who say that writing is to entertain, and to tell a story (different aspects of the same coin), respectively.

So writing is to entertain by telling a story, in order to find out what we think.

HMS

HMS

She slooped the grand vessel of her pregnancy
Along the sidewalk,
tacking to this or that shop window,
luffing back toward curb to watch the traffic

She dabbled in her progress
A dilettante of forward motion,
Undestined but unwilling to stay put
As if to stand would risk a topple
As if the movement lent her balance
Like a boy on a bicycle

And then her chariot of dreams arrived
And she pushed the spinnaker
of imminent maternity
ahead of her onto the bus.


copyright 2009 D. Quarrell

To Carve a Horse

They say to carve a horse
is easy; simply take away the stuff
that doesnt look like a horse.

Suppose, suppose the horse youre trying to carve
doesnt look like horses youve seen?
A different color perhaps,
or shaggy in the mane,
short in the shanks,
no Trigger,
Buttermilk or
Silver, not even
Champion or
Scout, but
Shorty or Scruffy.

Suppose the horse youre trying to carve
is really named Tubby,
and you carve away too much
and are left with only part of a horse.
The back part, maybe.

Then what have you done,
there are already more of
those in the world
than there are horses?

copyright 2009, Dean Quarrell