— Creating a Text - John P Matthew

What phases are involved in the creation of a text?

When a substantial idea occurs to me it occurs in what I call a cloud. The cloud includes a few images, a few words, a few thoughts (as different from words), even tunes of songs. Immediately I write it in my notebook that I carry for this purpose. Then I reconstruct it as an essay or short story or poem.

No, I don’t think there is a formula or a single idea. It’s rather a grouping of ideas, which is as nebulous as a cloud (this analogy is because it is raining here rather heavily). Then the whole tenor of the piece may change when I sit down to write it. I may change it a lot depending upon the mood I am in: cheerful, dour, bitter, etc.

The process of writing is for me something that innately wants to express me and my thoughts as the perfect written solutions to the chaos, confusion and sounds that exist around me. I have found a sanctuary in writing, and I feel for those who haven’t.

John P Matthew writes prose and poetry; he blogs at: http://johnpmathew.blogspot.com

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— Jesus Out to Sea

This piece from Bruce Desilva looks at a new book of short stories from James Lee Burke, and Levee Prayer, an elegy by bluesman Jimmy Thackery. Both works are inspired by Hurricane Katrina and the mess it left behind in New Orleans.
Here’s James Lee Burke, in Jesus Out to Sea:
“You woke in the morning to [...]

— A Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

Sunset
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colours
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the [...]