Zen in the Art of Writing

Ray Bradbury

• Publisher: HarperVoyager
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780008120870
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Publishing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing.

…ON CREATIVITY

GO PANTHER-PAWED WHERE ALL THE MINED

TRUTHS SLEEP

Not smash and grab, but rather find and keep;

Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep

To detonate the hidden seeds with stealth

So in your wake a weltering of wealth

Springs up unseen, ignored, and left behind

As you sneak on, pretending to be blind.

On your return along the jungle path you’ve made

Find all the littered stuffs where you have strayed;

The small truths and the large have surfaced there

Where you stealth-blundered wildly unaware

Or seeming so. And so these mines were mined

In easy game of pace and pounce and find;

But mostly fluid pace, not too much pounce.

Attention must be paid, but by the ounce.

Mock caring, seem aloof, ignore each mile

And metaphors like cats behind your smile

Each one wound up to purr, each one a pride,

Each one a fine gold beast you’ve hid inside,

Now summoned forth in harvests from the brake

Turned anteloping elephants that shake

And drum and crack the mind to awe,

To behold beauty yet perceive its flaw.

Then, flaw discovered, like fair beauty’s mole,

Haste back to reckon all entire, the Whole.

This done, pretend these wits you do not keep,

Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep.

WHAT I DO IS ME – FOR THAT I CAME

for Gerard Manley Hopkins.

What I do is me – for that I came.

What I do is me!

For that I came into the world!

So said Gerard;

So said that gentle Manley Hopkins.

In his poetry and prose he saw the Fates that chose

Him in genetics, then set him free to find his way

Among the sly electric printings in his blood.

God thumbprints thee! he said.

Within your hour of birth

He touches hand to brow, He whorls and softly stamps

The ridges and the symbols of His soul above your eyes!

But in that selfsame hour, full born and shouting

Shocked pronouncements of one’s birth,

In mirrored gaze of midwife, mother, doctor

See that Thumbprint fade and fall away in flesh

So, lost, erased, you seek a lifetime’s days for it

And dig deep to find the sweet instructions there

Put by when God first circuited and printed thee to life:

‘Go hence! do this! do that! do yet another thing!

This self is yours! Be it!’

And what is that?! you cry at hearthing breast,

Is there no rest? No, only journeying to be yourself.

And even as the Birthmark vanishes, in seashell ear

Now fading to a sigh, His last words send you in the world:

‘Not mother, father, grandfather are you.

Be not another. Be the self I signed you in your blood.

I swarm your flesh with you. Seek that.

And, finding, be what no one else can be.

I leave you gifts of Fate most secret; find no other’s Fate,

For if you do, no grave is deep enough for your despair

No country far enough to hide your loss.

I circumnavigate each cell in you

Your merest molecule is right and true.

Look there for destinies indelible and fine

And rare.

Ten thousand futures share your blood each instant;

Each drop of blood a cloned electric tw...