Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg lived in Brooklyn until she was six, when her family moved out to Farmingdale, Long Island, where her father owned the bar the Aero Tavern. From a young age, Goldberg was mad for books and reading, and especially loved Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe , which she read in ninth grade. She thinks that single book led her eventually to put pen to paper when she was twenty-four years old. She received a BA in English literature from George Washington University and an MA in humanities from St. John's University.Goldberg has painted for as long as she has written, and her paintings can be seen in Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World and Top of My Lungs: Poems and Paintings. They can also be viewed at the Ernesto Mayans Gallery on Canyon Road in Sante Fe.A dedicated teacher, Goldberg has taught writing and literature for the last thirty-five years. She also leads national workshops and retreats, and her schedule can be accessed via her website: nataliegoldberg.comIn 2006, she completed with the filmmaker Mary Feidt a one-hour documentary, Tangled Up in Bob, about Bob Dylan's childhood on the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota. The film can be obtained on Amazon or the website tangledupinbob.com.Goldberg has been a serious Zen practitioner since 1974 and studied with Katagiri Roshi from 1978 to 1984.

Quotes

Marcie Mata Dhas quotedlast year
In his lecture, he said that Zen poems are marked by a feeling of space and also a tinge of sadness.
I agreed. Sadness comes from the knowledge of impermanence. Everything will eventually pass away. Why be sad? Because we love and no matter how dispassionate we become, we are not ice bricks. We are human beings with feelings.
Marcie Mata Dhas quotedlast year
IT IS CALLED a cut-up. Take some old poems, journal entries, etc., and simply cut apart the lines with a scissors. Now place the lines on a clean sheet of paper, helter-skelter, mixing them up from your different sources. Throw in additional lines from the Yellow Pages, a dictionary, Scientific American. Play around with them, shifting lines, discarding some, adding others. When you have something that pleases you, glue it down on the page.
You can also do this with a friend, alternating lines from each other’s work.
It’s good practice. It breaks open the mind.
Now, do a ten-minute timed writing, but make the topic of each sentence different from the subject of the sentence you just wrote. At first it seems impossible, but then it becomes fun. It is good practice in making your mind nimble and willing to take leaps.
Josue Chinhas quoted2 years ago
That’s all a reader really wants”—she nodded her head—“to know the author better. Even if it’s a novel, they want to know the author.”

Impressions

Marcie Mata Dshared an impressionlast year
🎯Worthwhile
👍Worth reading

  • Natalie Goldberg
    Wild Mind
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