I recently completed Laure Ferlita’s online art class, An Imaginary Trip to Greece, an experience that qualifies as both a simple pleasure and an everyday adventure. One of the main focuses of her classes is learning how to quickly capture a scene on location where conditions can change quickly, you can be interrupted, etc. One tool Laure stresses in class is the “five Es”—concepts that help us figure out what we want to sketch and how we can make each sketch uniquely our own. The Five Es are: Evaluate, Eliminate, Edit, Exaggerate, and Embellish. Always on the lookout for principles that could be useful in living a happier, more artful life, it occurs to me that the five Es could be quite usefull:

Evaluate. Just as an artist evaluates his or her subject to find its most pleasing aspect or determine what is sketchable in the time available, you can evaluate your life to see how it's running. What feels good and bad, how you’re measuring up to your standards, how you’re progressing toward your goals. Taking stock of the who, what, when, where and why of life. In stopping to evaluate, you bring awareness to your life instead of drifting (or charging) around mindlessly.

Eliminate. On location, once you’ve chosen your subject, you want to eliminate anything that doesn’t significantly add to the sketch. You simply won’t have time to get every detail down on paper, so choose your details wisely. In the same way, life is short! After you evaluate it, you might decide you have some things to get rid of. Maybe literally, like that closet of items you want to donate to charity or a stack of old magazines and catalogs you’ll never get around to reading. Maybe it’s a chore or other commitment that has outlived its usefulness. It might even be a person who drags you down every time you’re together. What can you get rid of to make your life better?

Edit. In sketching and life, once you’ve decided what you want to focus on and what you want to eliminate, what’s left? Maybe you don’t want to eliminate something all together, but you can pare it down or simplify it.

Exaggerate. In class, Laure advises students to “use your creative license to exaggerate the elements to make it a great piece of art.” In sketching, that might mean darkening the values, or adjusting the direction of the light hitting your subject to make a more interesting composition. To translate this into life, choose to focus on, encourage and support the positive.

Embelish. The fun part! In art, this is where you add your own style to your sketch. In life, this is where you find ways to make it more beautiful—buy the fresh flowers, eat the chocolate, go see that movie, play, concert or sporting event that interests you. Life should be more than a list of chores and responsibilities.

Just as Laure’s five Es make sketching on location easier and more fun by giving me a framework to help me choose a subject and execute a sketch, using the five Es as a framework for living helps me feel like an artist in my own life. (And thank you to Laure for introducing me to these principles in art and in life!)

Do you have any principles that help you lead a happier, more artful life?

Dana Gioia, who served as Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, did a marvelous job of bringing the arts to Americans, arguably the best job that anyone in that position has done. He was a fine poet before he took that job, and he is a fine poet after. Here’s an example of his recent work. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Pity the Beautiful

Pity the beautiful,

the dolls, and the dishes,

the babes with big daddies

granting their wishes.

Pity the pretty boys,

the hunks, and Apollos,

the golden lads whom

success always follows.

The hotties, the knock-outs,

the tens out of ten,

the drop-dead gorgeous,

the great leading men.

Pity the faded,

the bloated, the blowsy,

the paunchy Adonis

whose luck’s gone lousy.

Pity the gods,

no longer divine.

Pity the night

the stars lose their shine.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Dana Gioia, whose most recent book of poems is Pity the Beautiful, Graywolf Press, 2012. Poem reprinted from Poetry, May 2011, by permission of Dana Gioia and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

Our pool looks like this:

We’ve been lucky so far, though. We haven’t had any high winds, tornadoes or power outages, unlike other areas. According to the latest storm track, Debby might make landfall near Florida’s panhandle, blanketing nearly the whole state with more rain.

I’ve put aside the errands I planned to do today, in favor of sticking close to home, staying dry, and charging all our battery-operated electronics. (I remember what happened last time our power went out.) I’m keeping our AC running cooler than normal today. In case the power does go out, we won’t get hot and sticky quite as soon. I’ve also located the flashlights, and the batteries for the lamps and fans.

Welcome to summer/hurricane season.

No, this isn’t how I planned to spend today, but that’s OK. There are always more than enough things wanting my attention here. Monday usually sets the tone for my week, and I want to make good use of it, even though the gray and rainy skies make me want to go back to bed!

How will you spend today?

“You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn't depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family.”

—Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

(I’ve had family visiting for the past five days so I haven’t been online much—I’ll be catching up on reading, commenting and posting in the next couple days!)

I only have two aunts, but they are both special members of the family. This poem, by Joyce Sutphen of Minnesota, captures for me the warm, loving feelings the word “aunt” brings to mind.

The Aunts

I like it when they get together

and talk in voices that sound

like apple trees and grape vines,

and some of them wear hats 

and go to Arizona in the winter,

and they all like to play cards.

They will always be the ones

who say “It is time to go now,”

even as we linger at the door,

or stand by the waiting cars, they

remember someone—an uncle we

never knew—and sigh, all

of them together, like wind

in the oak trees behind the farm

where they grew up—a place

I remember—especially

the hen house and the soft

clucking that filled the sunlit yard.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine.  It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.  Poem copyright ©2010 by Joyce Sutphen from her most recent book of poetry, “First Words,” Red Dragonfly Press, 2010.  Poem reprinted by permission of Joyce Sutphen and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2011 by The Poetry Foundation.