Books
Poetry and Creative Process
Poetry Practice
A poem on the page is a script for an event that hasn’t happened yet. It’s an invitation to an ephemeral experience that comes alive when you lift the poem with your eyes and meet it with your awareness, phrase by phrase. As attention moves down the ladder of lines, something begins to gather. You can feel it.
Poetry long predates the written word. It began as a spoken art, and to endure, a poem had to be memorable. Sound and sense became concentrated—spare, compelling—or the poem was forgotten. When you choose a poem that intrigues you and speak it aloud, that original intensity is released. What you hear changes as sound resonates and returns to your ears and mind. Those nearby can feel it too.
Return to a few poems again and again; let them vibrate in your chest. Or gather many and sit with them. This practice is clarifying. Through it, you can come to know yourself.
Swallowing the World
New and Selected Poems
By Don Freas
Poetry | 6" x 9" | 186 pages
Trade Paper
ISBN 978-0-9725074-6-2
$15.
*Also available through Amazon UK and Europe
If you prefer, order directly from Don Freas.
Between Flights
I settle in the airport lounge and look
around to see if I love everyone
yet. I don't. A man has wild eyes,
spiky dark hair, rumpled clothing;
a woman looks down her nose, frowning,
stern. Another man, older, looks at me
like I shouldn't be wearing
this beret; his wife has a far away gaze,
half smile, like she wishes I was her son.
I wonder if I look like I'd rather be dead.
She reminds me of old secretaries
in the office of my father's paper mill
in Steubenville, who wished they'd
been born with my hair. I tried
not to look at their gray old-lady
helmet-hair and thought I'd pay a fortune
to keep my hair from looking like theirs.
Now the top half of my hair is gone
the rest is still curly and graying as I scan
the lounge and pronounce small judgments
on fellow travelers. It doesn't last long.
The man who looked dangerous looks
a lot like I do, and the old lady
offers me her newspaper. Soon I know
her husband is a poet, teaches at Berkeley.
I remember a poem, from Twisted Heart.
—Don Freas
IN BETWEEN:
Creativity Set Free
By Don Freas
Artist's Books | 8.5" x 8.5" | 94 pages
Trade Paper
ISBN 979-8866305971
$20.
Book Release
A couple of years ago, I started a book about creating sculpture over the last four decades. I set out to create a book about my creative process, to learn something fresh from the writing rather than rehash well-worn stories. These writings, together with 60+ photos, have become “IN BETWEEN: Creativity Set Free.”
"The story of Don Freas isn’t really about woodworking [or poetry or sculpture] but about how a person can choose what he will explore and become—and then become it."
Vance Horne, Journalist
"It’s his ideas more than the sculpture or poetry. Don has so much depth; he gives you a little poem or sculpture, but I want to ask questions because I know there’s a hundred miles of outstanding stuff behind that. He is so diverse; he has so many points of view."
Dale Witherow, Artist, Educator
