The Bradbury Prescription

A few months ago, I was going through a significant reading slump (aren’t we all?), so was digging into the b-sides of a member of my literary pantheon, Ray Bradbury. I came across this quote in a listicle on LitHub, which is really just a potted Zen in the Art of Writing. I’ve taken to calling what he describes the Bradbury Prescription, for its miraculous curative powers. The following quote is long, but necessary to convey his enthusiasm, which is an essential ingredient:

What you’ve got to do from this night forward is stuff your head with more different things from various fields . . . I’ll give you a program to follow every night, very simple program. For the next thousand nights, before you go to bed every night, read one short story. That’ll take you ten minutes, 15 minutes. Okay, then read one poem a night from the vast history of poetry. Stay away from most modern poems. It’s crap. It’s not poetry! It’s not poetry. Now if you want to kid yourself and write lines that look like poems, go ahead and do it, but you’ll go nowhere. Read the great poets, go back and read Shakespeare, read Alexander Pope, read Robert Frost. But one poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night, for the next 1,000 nights. From various fields: archaeology, zoology, biology, all the great philosophers of time, comparing them. Read the essays of Aldous Huxley, read Lauren Eisley, great anthropologist. . . I want you to read essays in every field. On politics, analyzing literature, pick your own. But that means that every night then, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one poem, one short story, one essay—at the end of a thousand nights, Jesus God, you’ll be full of stuff, won’t you?

-from “Telling the Truth,” the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University, 2001, via Lithub

I’ve been following it most days this year, and keeping track in a small notebook. I’m trying to keep it low pressure, so if the poem comes from the excellent daily email Pome and not from one of the million unread poetry collections I own, that’s fine. If the essay is from Brandon Taylor‘s newsletter, great! Those are some of the best essays out there right now!

My plan is to share what I’ve read a few days a week, with links if I can find them and quotes if I took them. I’d love to hear if you try something similar, and what you read — you can find me on Twitter @meghanembee or over at marginallypodcast.com or here, of course.

The hard question

January 22, 2022

Two poems today.

“The Hard Question,” W.H. Auden, which I looked up because it was quoted in the Ruefle essay, “On Fear,” that I read earlier. Here it’s read and discussed on the Read Me a Poem podcast.

“Cowboy,” Kandace Siobhan Walker, from the Pome newsletter (originally published in Bath Magg — definitely go read this one. I printed it out and stuck it in my notebook).

rosie the robot

poem: “Time Pieces” Dennis O’Driscoll, excerpted in Pome
story: “rosie the robot” aureleo sans in Electric Lit’s Commuter (this story, goddamn)

I wonder if she measures herself in ounces or liters as she sardines her body into a dress fashioned from Goodwill curtains. …

Mama’s government name is Rosalinda.