A Poet Laureate and Tarot...(paraphrasing her inspiration)

[Cerulean]

Kay Ryan July 5 2009 on NPR
U.S. Poet Laureate on self training herself to be a writer after an 'enlightened moment' of thinking and while on a 4,000 bicycle ride across country...

Afterwards as she trained herself in her writing practice...(in her 30s)

...I had a tarot deck and would pull a card...

Interviewer:...You had to pull cards like Death and Lovers...and it is hard to write (about these grand themes)...without sounding sentimental or recycling...

KR:...The Heirophant...

Interviewer: But it forces you to face these themes that you weren't normally...
(lots of other discussion)..
...any private meditative practice that puts you into this place...like yoga...has its purpose...

People can fill this in, but her words sounded so wonderful and seemed like what people here are doing as part of their tarot study and practice...and how tarot can integrate itself in value with other studies.

Best,

Cerulean

 

[Moonbow]

The wonderful uses of Tarot.

Even if not a reader in the divination sense, it has so many wonderful inspirational factors, particularly in the arts; music, painting and writing.

I like to use Tarot for personal reflections and ways of engaging in self development, psychological issues and concerns, and for spiritual practice. Its a huge 'life' book.

 

[Cerulean]

This is from Mary Greer's blog, quoting from Marin Independent:

The U.S.A. has a new Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan. And, she tells everyone she started her career by writing poems about tarot cards.

This is from an interview in the Marin Independent Journal:

Ryan decided to pursue writing seriously after having an epiphany while bicycling up the Rocky Mountains while on a 4,000-mile, cross-country bicycle trip in 1976. When she returned home, she set to work. She began using a deck of Tarot cards as an exercise, forcing herself to write a poem about the subject of whichever card she drew at random. Some of the subjects were harder than others.

“Death, I’ve never minded that so much,” Ryan says. “Love, I minded because it’s just so icky, so overdone. I just didn’t want to touch it.”

And here’s from Tulsa World:

“Still shying away from difficut themes, Ryan assigned herself a task: She would get out a pack of tarot cards, turn one card over every day and write a poem from it. ‘So I had to start dealing with these abstractions like love, death, the wheel of fortune.’”

 

[Cerulean]

Here it is in her own words for the Paris Review:

http://www.parisreview.com/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5889
When you rode your bicycle across the country you discovered you were meant to become a writer, but what are the practical ways you taught yourself to write?

RYAN
I’d kept a journal of that trip and decided that I would get up every day and transcribe that journal, augment it and fix it up. What that gave me was the habit.
But once that was done I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’d bought a tarot deck—this was the seventies—a standard one with a little accompanying book that explained how to read the cards, lay them out, shuffle them—all those things. But I’m not a student and was totally impatient with learning anything about the cards. I thought they were just interesting to look at. But I did use the book’s shuffling method, which was very elaborate, and in the morning I’d turn one card over and whatever that card was I would write a poem about it. The card might be Love, or it might be Death. My game, or project, was to write as many poems as there were cards in the deck. But since I couldn’t control which cards came up, I’d write some over and over again and some I’d never see. That gave me range. I always understood that to write poetry was to be totally exposed. But in the seventies I only had models of ripping off your clothes, and I couldn’t do that. My brain could be naked, but I didn’t want to be naked. Nor was I interested in the heart, or love. The tarot helped me see that I could write about anything—even love if required—and retain the illusion of not being exposed. If one is writing well, one is totally exposed. But at the same time, one has to feel thoroughly masked or protected.
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Cerulean says: Hoping that might be hope/inspirations for others.
Best wishes,