Small Branches Poetry

Draft: Phases

2010-01-28T19:08:00.003-07:00

Phases
by Amy Unsworth

The geese stitch the night with their cries
and the cold seeps through the layers
upon layers, wool, silk, skin, muscle.

Forget the moon in her longing. Who
can bear to be reminded of the immensity
of loneliness, her cold white face.

The cold white sheets spread clean
across our bed. The laundry in tidy
piles: five socks, the fifth folding

in on itself, waiting. The days
add minutes, in beginning and ending.
The dark, a cipher, un-coding.

Our dogs snarl and snap then stretch,
returning to sleep, the down
rises like glacial peaks worn smooth.

Pages Rustle: Featured Poet Tim Mayo

2009-12-09T12:23:00.005-07:00

Mayapple Press

***

Frame of Reference with Sun Breaking Through

If the truth be known, I lied about the sun: how its
light shafted through the parting clouds as if
an unknown entity were blessing the landscape below,
the curving rows of grain molded to the hill’s shape,
how the field dipped out of sight then rose again
from an unseen vale climbing like the pelted back
of some animal yet to be classified: phylum
genus, species.

Even the landscape I made up
cobbling together parts of Breughel with memories
of a child’s book, The Farmer in the Dell, Old MacDonald,
the perfect rows of corn corduroying into the horizon,
and somewhere midfield and off-center to the left
a red tractor tries to gain the top of the hill.

----------------------

Back to the sun:
I could have just left it there,
the high drama of its shafts stabbing
inspiration into the brown and green land,
demonstrating how divine intervention
plays out its not so subtle hand,
and you could have gone home,
rolled down your bed for the night
and pulled up the covers against the dark
knowing that the unconsciousness of sleep
was still safe, and the brush strokes
of my hand were benevolent, as always,

but I have left clouds, instead, and you must
sort through the sky as best you can.

***

One way to read Tim Mayo’s “Point of Reference” is as a commentary on the study and practice of literature today: on the canon, and the contemporary jettisoning of the canon for lesser known, more inclusive, works. The canon’s long history of interaction with the Divine provided a central point of view that everyone trained in the western classical tradition could accept or dispute. The contemporary desire to eradicate the tradition for the inclusion of other paths and voices is a decentralizing force stripping away traditional notions of what “good” and “great” literature is. Readers who value the canon and the canon’s interaction with the Divine as part of their point of reference find it unsettling when the canonical traditions are stripped away and devalued. As a poet who obviously has studied the canon, Mayo has created his own song of Innocence and Experience here with his two landscapes, one of the Ideal and the Divine, vs. the natural and mundane world where without such an ordering principle, life is more difficult to “sort through.”

The first stanza’s landscape, with the references to Breughel (and hence Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts”) and the “rows of corn corduroying into the horizon” represents the lost Ideal, some bucolic, pastoral wonderland filled with plenty and light where even the vales can be neatly filed in orderly categories. This is the place of fantasy, the Ideal that we hold every autumn against that only exists in art or recalled in softly glowing “memories of a child’s book;” the good and orderly that we often tend to seek. For literature, the Ideal gave readers parameters through a simple comparison of the new work with the old. If the newly created book or poem fit the rules or broke the rules in interesting ways, then the work might be designated important. If the play or novel was not easily classified, then the work was most likely excluded, as has been the case with many works by women or writers outside the dominant norm.

The second stanza, which is an unmaking of the first, toys with our doubts, our fears and our uncertainty in this not-so-perfect world. This stanza provides an adult world where the stories from our childhood may not sooth us as we lie down to sleep, and where “divine intervention” may not clearly show “its not so subtle hand.” Where what we have been taught does not always explain the world we see around us. A world where the creator’s hand might not be “benevolent, as always.” Instead, the stanza represents a world filled with doubt and unclear motives. The only thing certain about the unmade landscape is the clouds that one must “sort through . . . as best you can.” For literature, the current inclusive, subjective acceptance of a wide variety of work as important has had a similar consequence of creating a great quantity of “clouds” that must be sorted through. Without the centralizing force of the canon, who is to determine the “good” when none of the traditional rules still apply? Since questions of what makes a poem good have changed dramatically in the last one hundred years, especially since the rise of modernism, it’s not surprising to find a poet struggling with the topic in his work and coming to the final conclusion, as the speaker states, that each of us “must sort through the sky as best you can” even without that secure frame of reference.

***

Q & A with Poet Tim Mayo

Q: Since I’m talking about the canon in this reading of you poem, I’m going to ask you about your education in literature and writing. Has your experience been “classical” or “non-traditional”? Is there a particular poem or poet whose work brought you to poetry?

Tim Mayo: I don’t remember getting interested in poetry until I was a sophomore in High School. I remember that one poem I showed to my English teacher was an imitation of Sandburg’s poem about the fog creeping in on little cat’s feet––or however it goes. I was in a military school in northern Indiana at the time, so Sandburg makes sense. Soon after that I left military school and went to a very progressive school in Western Massachusetts which emphasized the arts. It was at that point that I really began to read poetry and came across the two poems which probably I first fell in love with: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Howl.” So, although I don’t think of my own work as being eclectic, I seem to have always read eclectically, and my tastes in poetry seem to be wide enough to answer your question by saying “non-traditional.” It’s interesting that I’ve given you two longish poems and I never write long poems (never say never), but these drew me to poetry and I still hold them dear to me, but now along with so, so many others.

Q: How do you view the canon as part of your growth and development as a writer? In another poem from the book, I saw a bit of resistance to (and eventual embrasure of) the confessional mode, you seem to concentrate more about these issues of “how to write” as a subject matter than many contemporary poets whose works I’ve read. Why do you feel this is an important subject for you?

Tim Mayo: When I was younger, except for imitating poets, I had no sense of the canon. Today, I would guess I am in the process of trying to become a part of it, but if we are all governed by (and we seem to try to be) Ezra Pound’s precept “Make it new,” then we are all trying to write against the canon or some sort of tradition we label as being old hat. Although even as I say that I think of what one of my teachers Liam Rector said about trying to recognize and honor through your art the poets who preceded you. I think I am just stumbling along. There are some of my poems which at least begin as direct descendants of other poems, but then they seem go their own way or speak antiphonally to that poem out of which they grew. Compare the first two lines of “The Loneliness of Dogs” to “Musée des Beaux Arts” or read “At a Walmart in Southern New Hampshire” and then read Ginsberg’s “In a California Super Market.”

As for the confessional mode, which really is a ball and chain around the ankles of most poets writing today, I have taken the path of writing about what I know. This has meant that my poems are often anecdotes coming from something I have experienced and internalized to a point that the experience has an emotional weight and meaning for me. I don’t think I can write about something which doesn’t have that. But my intentions in writing about anything which has happened to me is not to recount my life, but hopefully to find and convey to the readers what it is about that particular experience which resonates for me and make it resonate for them as well. I’m looking to try and make universal observations out of individual and specific anecdotes. Boy does that sound highfalutin. The poem I think you referred to in your question “The Confessional Poet’s Confession” does poke fun at that confessional mode, but at the same time makes a serious confession and observation about how we (us poets––or actually anyone) often never look beyond our own personal pain to recognize the experience of others and be aware that we aren’t the only people suffering out there. It does happen to twist the joke into a serious (at least serious sounding) confession of what seems to be the speaker’s fault in a failed relationship. I’m not sure I want to say more about it.

Why do I write about writing? I guess it has something to do with a wish to be able to say or describe something, a phenomenon, so exactly that everyone just says, “Yes! That’s it!” That doesn’t really answer your question, but I think it is the wish that I might be able to do it someday in a poem. That how “it” was expressed would seem so absolutely right, no one could or would want to think of an alternative way to express it. Of course this is idealism, sheer fantasy or just the impossible at best.

Q: Who do you look to as “good” poets whose work you admire and might emulate?

Tim Mayo: Of the living poets whom I admire, there are many more than I can list. In any case here are a few. I put Charles Wright and Stephen Dunn pretty much at the top of the pile. This in itself is a quandary. For example, I am an atheist and Wright, I would say, is not, but I admire his meditations on all this as well as his sheer mastery of the line, his marriage of imagery and sound. As for Dunn, I think it is his poignant observations of secular life and the psychological truths he manages to splay open that I like. He is very deft at revealing these things. Ted Kooser can bring things to a heightened vivid description, but not so much about psychological things as making physical observations (Delights & Shadows). I am also a fan and devotee of many other poets. Mary Oliver, though to me I come away thinking she is writing the same poem over and over. I mean we all do that (my writing about writing is probably just that), but we usually try to disguise it (I obviously didn’t), and pretend we have a wider range than we have. She doesn’t which in some ways is very honest, but her complacency about it may not necessarily make for great art. You could say Wright is writing the same poem over and over, but I don’t seem to get bored with him, if he is. I also like Robert Haas. I studied under Henri Cole and love his work. As I do with other teachers of mine, April Bernard, Ed Ochester and the late Liam Rector whose work I’ve just begun to appreciate. I love the passion of Martín Espada. How he can make poetry out of politics which is something very few poets can do. I’m not much for making a hierarchy, I love so many different poets for so many different things, and I think if you do, then it is easier for you to see new paths to follow as an artist. Not that I am necessarily following any new paths, but I might start to soon.

Of the dead poets. There are too many, and I’m going to leave out many who are important to me as I have done with the living, but here we go. I do see Dickenson and Whitman as the true mother and father of American poetry. Everything we seem to have and do comes from them. I love Keats’s lushness of sound and imagery, Donne’s ability to construct conceits. I love Auden, Yeats, Shakespeare, of course, and to go American again, Williams, Hart Crane though the latter is too reckless with his poems. I don’t think he ever developed a unifying sense of a poem. He never lived long enough for that to possibly happen. I wouldn’t try to emulate Williams. I think his legacy writing in American speech patterns both freed us from the artifice of 19th century diction which you see a bit of in Hart Crane, but it ended up leading us down the path (through no fault of his own) to where we emulate speech so much in our poems, it’s hard to recognize them as poetry and it’s hard to insert anything which is startling vis à vis lush sound combinations (because people don’t talk that way) and it is hard to write something with truly startling imagery (also because people don’t talk that way) and well wrought metaphors or conceits since that is something which doesn’t happen in normal speech, because normal speech is not well thought out nor planned. But most of all this emulation of speech has lead to a total break down of any sense of line and stanza. I confess I may well be as guilty of this as anyone else. However, when I open a literary journal, I can read a poem in tercets or quatrains where syntax and sense have absolutely no correlation with the poet having organized the poem in either tercets or quatrains. The poet doesn’t even seem to be writing against them, he/she seem more to be writing and just cutting them up in lines that he’s gathered into threes or fours because that’s how he/she “feels” the poem should be. A little too much feeling one’s way through the poem. This I find to be also true for the way poets organize the line unit in a lot of poems. The reasons why a line ends where it does mystifies me at best in many poems I read. Again I don’t necessarily exclude myself from this. I struggle trying to justify to myself why the line should or should ot end where it does (the curse of open poetry/free verse) and I am probably in the end just as guilty as those I am criticizing.

Q: Of course there are many ways of reading “Frame of Reference,” and another of the interesting ones is that the poem plays with ideas of truth and trust between the writer and the reader, and also of the writer’s ability to be both creator and destroyer for the small space of the poem. So, how did this poem come into being?

Tim Mayo: As I mentioned I am an atheist and this poem seemed to develop out of an imagined one way conversation between God and some poor indivisible mortal under God. This was my governing impulse behind the poem, but it came out more as an artist (of which you can think of God as an artist) creating something designed to keep you wondering, hence the final couplet.

I think your mention of “trust between the writer and the reader” strikes a chord. I have always tried when I am writing to imagine that one of my readers whom I will reach is someone who is not “literary” and who may have very little experience with poetry. So I try when I make allusions to something literary in a poem that it doesn’t occupy a place in the poem where the reader comes away not understanding the gist of the poem because he doesn’t know what I was referring to. Oddly enough my poem “The Third Little Pig” may the big exception to that principle. I doubt the poem can be understood if you don’t know the story, but a poem based on “The Three Little Pigs” is very different from one based on some obscure reference to a lesser known work which only someone with an academic background would pick up on even though the principle is the same. I have had several people come up to me after either having read my book or after a reading I’ve given and said “I don’t usually read or like poetry, but your poems got to me.” Those comments mean a lot to me, but so does praise from the community of the well read. What can I say? I want it all.

Q: Any other thoughts on poetry?

Tim Mayo: I guess in the end it all boils down to what we think poetry is for. To me it must on some level delight the reader not through just a clever verbal manipulation, but also on a deeper more thoughtful level through metaphor and imagery. I think it also needs to provide some sort of comfort and satisfaction. Not the kind of comfort which says everything will be all right, but the kind which says to the reader you’re not alone in your troubled thoughts, that there’s at least this one other person who wrote this poem who has also experienced the same anguish you have. Or close to it. As for satisfaction, well, I think of that as the reaction the reader has when he/she says “yes, that’s it!”

***

Three More Poems to Note:

"Honey"

"Naming the Emotions"

"Father Poem"

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Poet’s Biography:

Tim Mayo holds an ALB, cum laude, from Harvard University and an MFA from The Bennington Writing Seminars. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Arbutus , Avatar Review, Babel Fruit , Big Toe Review , The Chrysalis Reader, Del Sol Review , 5 AM, Inertia Magazine, Mannequin Envy , Poet Lore, The Rose & Thorn Literary E-zine ,Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac.

Among the awards his poetry has garnered are two International Merit Awards from Atlanta Review; he was also a finalist in the 2007 WinningWriters.com War Poetry Contest and twice nominated for the 2008 Best of the Net Anthology. In 2000 he was a semi-finalist in the “Discovery/The Nation Poetry Contest and has been awarded two fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center’s annual Vermont Artist’s Week.

His chapbook The Loneliness of Dogs (Pudding House Publications 2008 ) was a finalist in the WCDR 2008 Chapbook Challenge in Ajax, Ontario, Canada, and his most recent publication The Kingdom of Possibilities (Mayapple Press) was a semi finalist for the 2009 Brittingham and Pollock Awards, a finalist for the 2007 Main Street Rag Award and lastly, a finalist for 2009 May Swenson Award. He is a former member of the Brattleboro Literary Festival author committee and lives in Brattleboro, Vermont.

For more about this poet see his webpage: Tim Mayo and at his Red Room Author Page

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Purchase information: Mayapple Press and elsewhere on the web.

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Upcoming on Pages Rustle: work from Carol Levin's Red Rooms and Others

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Pages Rustle: Featured Poet Brian Daldorph

2009-09-28T12:33:00.026-06:00

Every so often, I'll be featuring a new poem, my thoughts on the work, and a conversation with the poet. I hope you'll enjoy and come back again for the next installation!

***

This week's poem from:

From the Inside Out: Sonnets

By Brian Daldorph

Woodley Press

***

Fall

He needs this cell. It was getting cold
out there and he’d done all the drugs he could buy.
It was either jail or die.
Sometimes he thinks he’s getting too old
for this shit, but it’s too late to start over
with some sweet-eyed lover
who says, “You and only you are the man I love.”
He’d be late for his wedding again,
and what woman would choose a man with a cracked brain?
He sees the young punks in here scared
about what they’ve gotten into, not
the cocky kids they were on the street who dared
to run faster than the cops. He ended up in this cell
where it’s warm enough. And three hot meals.

***

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation”
Henry David Thoreau

Brian Daldorph’s book of “From the Inside Out: Sonnets” utilizes many variations of the sonnet form. The sonnet form seems particularly appropriate for “Fall” and the other poems which are set in a jail cell. The poem, like the subject, must make do with a limited amount of space and breathing room. In the condensed lines we learn a great deal about the inhabitant of the cell: a sketch portrait in minimum of a habitual drug user, with a knotty life story at last taking ownership of his past actions. This is a poem of a man whose quite desperation has led him to an almost unthinkably constrained life.

In “Fall,” the tight construction of the sonnet requires a compression of the narrative but Daldorph manages, with some carefully selected modifiers, to imply quite a bit of the character’s back-story. One of the appealing aspects of this sonnet is the poet’s use of eye or sight rhyme that helps to reinforce the subject matter through the form: things are not always how they look. The reader doesn’t always get what he or she expects the form to provide, especially when the sonnet is read aloud.

Restraint might be the best adjective to describe the narrator’s approach; in looking quietly, Daldorph manages to fill the poem with an intensity of implied emotion. It would be easy to treat the convict with disdain for his ruined life, but somehow this portrayal is more sympathetic than one might expect. The sympathetic view succeeds in this poem because it is not didactic, the constrained form of the sonnet helps the poet to hold the emotional rein in check and prevent the all too easy slide into moralizing. One way the narrator builds this sympathy is through the contrast between the older inmate and the “young punks.” This portrayal shows the subject recognizing his younger self in the youth who aren’t so cocky now on the “inside.” The regret, although implied, is clear.

The way the inmate acknowledges his own faults and misgivings allows the reader a glimpse at how tenuous our civilized lives are and how difficult life must be when through addiction and poor choices the last way to provide food and shelter also means paying with one’s freedom. As Henry David Thoreau stated, “the cost of a thing it will be remembered is the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.” The cost for the inmate seems terribly high.

***

Q & A with Poet Brian Daldorph

Q: I’m interested in hearing about your work in the Douglas County Jail. How did you become a poet in the jailhouse? How has that influenced your work?

Brian Daldorph: I've been working at Douglas County Jail since 2001. Years go by! Two of my colleagues in the English Dept set up the program, and when they left, I took over. I've had many different teaching experiences in my career, including teaching in Japan and Senegal, but my jail teaching's been my best experience of all. It's endlessly exciting to see that the art form I love can bring so much to people in dire circumstances. I've learnt so much from my long commitment to jail work. My new book, Jail Time, is about my teaching there, and some of the people I've met.

Q: The speaker’s point of view in this poem is sympathetic in the manner it catalogs the inmate’s losses and lost opportunities. And there are so many hints towards a back-story that this poem feels like it might be a condensed version of a story. How did this poem come to be?

Brian Daldorph: This jail poem is really an amalgam of stories and characters from the jail. True of many of the poems. This is the artistic element, really. To take the raw material and try to transform it into something coherent, more than the sum of its parts.

Q: The photographs at the section breaks in your book show a ruined world that is fascinating in its decay; are you the photographer as well? Is your writing particularly inspired by the visual arts?

Brian Daldorph: These photographs are by my exceptionally talented former student, Matt Porubsky. (I collaborate with him in a number of different ways). I asked him for photographs that caught the mood of the poems rather than intentionally illustrated them, and these are the haunting poems he produced, visual poems really.

Q: For you, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the sonnet form?

Brian Daldorph: The title of my book, From the Inside Out: Sonnets, has several ideas. My idea about writing sonnets is that if you work with the form consistently, which I did, writing hundreds of sonnets over a 6 to 8 year period, then you can internalize the form and write out from the form rather than writing into it as though it's set out in front of you. I love the strong form of the sonnet, how it intensifies language, yet the poet can push against it and make use of it in any number of ways.

One more point I'd like to add: Jail Time published by Original Plus (England) and I'm very pleased with it. I think it catches a lot of what I've experienced with my jail teaching over the years. (purchase information: Jail Time)

I liked what Mike Caron had to say about Jail Time and it seems and apt description of “Fall” as well:

"What these poems do provide is something akin to dispatches from a nearby place we are far too conditioned to see as a foreign country. If we pay attention to Brian’s poems we may discover the inhabitants of that place are not so alien as we imagined. The distance is really not that great."
--Mike Caron, Programs Supervisor, Douglas County Jail

***

Three More Poems to Note:

“Rambler”
“Fire”
“Prodigal Winter”

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Poet’s Biography:

Brian Daldorph teaches creative writing, literature, and writing at the University of Kansas. He has also taught in Japan, Senegal, England, Zambia, and the Douglas County Jail. Two books of his poems, The Holocaust and Hiroshima: Poems, and Outcasts, were published by Mid-America Press. Jail Time, a collection of poems written about his writing class at the Douglas County Jail, was published in April of this year.

For more about this poet see his page at Kansas Poets .

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Purchase Information: Woodley Press and elsewhere on the web.

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Brian also has an upcoming reading:

TWP POETRY READING SERIES @ THE JOHNSON COUNTY LIBRARY Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - 7:00 pmJohnson County Public Library, 9875 W. 87th, Overland Park, KSPoets Brian Daldorph and Bill Bauer. Brian Daldorph, teacher at the University of Kansas and Douglas County Jail, edits Coal City Review. Bill Bauer's Pear Season and The Boy Who Ate Dandelions, published by Mid-America Press, was selected by The Kansas City Star as one of its most noteworthy books of 2006.

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Upcoming on Pages Rustle: work from Tim Mayo’s The Kingdom of Possibilities.

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Pages Rustle: Featured Poet John Gallaher

2009-09-18T14:08:00.013-06:00

Map of the Folded World

By: John Gallaher

Akron Series in Poetry

University of Akron Press

***

Anecdote of the Little Houses

They're folding maps out across the yards,
over the houses
on the north side of the street
and on the south.

Look, darling, they say, the houses
are all lit up.
It's a summer night, in blue.

In the houses, they've gotten new clothes
and they're trying them on.
They're saying yes,

and they're saying no,
whenever they step from a room.
They're saying, I think so, and is, or isn't.

The people
are folding maps out
across the streets.

Time keeps running out, they say,
and there keeps being more of it
as the surfaces flash by.

And below,
after they stop at their houses,
the lines rise above the lines.

The red and blue lines
rising and falling all night
in their sleep.

***

The experience of reading John Gallaher’s work is a bit disconcerting in both its stick- figure familiarity and its other-world strangeness. Not surprising for a book entitled “Map of the Folded World,” there is an eerie two-dimensionality to the reality portrayed. It is as if suburban America was dropped into Plato’s cave and Gallaher is writing of the shadows. This is “our” American life but rendered from outside the houses looking in. I’m reminded a bit of the dispassionate tone of Raines in “A Martian Writes a Letter Home,” especially in the way that a lack of emotion is projected onto the anonymous inhabitants of the poem. (There are several other parallels in the poem’s subject matter as well: a discussion of time, the way the way things flash by, and ending in sleep)

But even in its strangeness this poem is also very connected to the poetry that has come before. The title alludes to Wallace Steven’s “Anecdote of the Jar” and with the way a simple object reorders the perception of reality from that of wilderness to that of inhabited land. Similarly, the maps of “Anecdote of the Little Houses” create a reordering of the three dimensional world into a two-dimensional “surface” world lacking the former’s complexity and depth.

In some ways, the poem distills us to our common parts: “They’re saying, I think so, and is, or isn’t” like we all do at one point or another. But the speaker doesn't seem to connect with the other inhabitants of the poem. Perhaps he might be critical of the contemporary society that is content to sleep peacefully in a superficial world, or he may merely be looking at the landscape as an outsider, not willing to adopt for himself the way other people live. Or perhaps, more optimistically, the speaker is trying to accept the way Americans live without passing judgment. The marked dispassionate tone keeps the reader guessing.

The poems highlights as well, our human, domesticated desire to have the way mapped out for us, to only go where the lines lead us and our easy satisfaction of living between the very lines that box us in and limit us. I like the Rorschach blot ambiguity of the red and blue lines above the sleepers, which may be the telephone and cable lines which are our umbilical cords to the media–driven reality we live in, or the lines on the map of our towns and suburbs that contain and constrain us, or even lines on the monitors representing our breathing and heart-rates blinking out towards our inevitable ends. Nevertheless, we feel safe in that mapped off world; we can sleep.

***

Q & A with Poet John Gallaher

Q: I’m very much always looking for a poem’s “significance,” and this is a poem that is in some ways resistant to a single way of understanding. As the poet, do you subscribe to McLeish’s idea that “a poem should Be/ not mean”?

John Gallager: A teacher of mine, Wayne Dodd, used to say that a poem should “mean AND be.” I always liked that formulation, and would like to, as he would say, associate myself with those remarks. But I feel like that might be hedging, to leave it at that. I am drawn to moments where meaning is deferred, knowing that meaning is inevitable, as our lives contain meaning, or embody meaning. So yes, I would side with the “Be” if such a choice were demanded. (And again, to remind myself that there’s a lot of meaning tucked away in that “Be.”)

Q: I notice in your biography that you’re originally from Oregon and now have settled in the Mid-West. How have your many relocations affected your work?

John Gallaher: I’ve lived all over the place. From Portland, I went to Wichita, where I moved when I was adopted. Then my family moved to Orange County California, and then on to Birmingham, Alabama, and Long Island, New York. As an adult, I’ve lived in central Texas, Athens, Ohio, Conway, Arkansas, and now, finally, in Maryville, Missouri, where I’ve now been for seven years (with my wife and children).

I’m quite sure that these relocations have had a large impact on my work. They’ve certainly had a large impact on me. I always dread the question: “So, where are you from?”

Q: In “Anecdote of the Little Houses,” you’re certainly flagging Wallace Steven’s poem “Anecdote of the Jar.” Would you consider Wallace Stevens & Modernists to be a major influence on your writing? Or do you look more towards the New York School poets?

John Gallaher: The only two Library of America editions that I’ve purchased are the Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery ones. I know their work better than I know anyone else’s. So, if that might be evidence, I suppose the answer would have to be that I have a foot in each world. But, truth to tell, I read the poetry of Rae Armantrout (and Michael Palmer, Martha Ronk, and Charles Wright, as well) and numerous others nearly as much. There’s such a large world of reading out there, and I adore so much of it, I’d hate to narrow myself to one (or even two) influences. And that’s just poetry. I’m also very interested in painting. That’s probably had as much (or maybe even more) influence on the way I see things, or attend to things as poetry has had.

Q: I wonder in a “chicken versus egg way” about the creative process. Did you write the poem first and then find the title or did the title come first. How did this poem come to be?

John Gallaher: From what I can remember, the poem came to be around the image of the map rising and falling over the people as they sleep. I like looking at paintings quite a bit, and I often like to think up paintings that don’t exist. Painting can allow for a very specific, even neutral, stance toward a scene. I’m quite envious of that. Paintings are accepted more easily by viewers, I think. There’s more of a social aspect to them. They call out for the viewer to participate, and viewers usually seem fairly willing to do so. I wish poetry were more like that.

As for the title, I simply love the “anecdote” form, as it filters through Stevens. Calling a poem an “anecdote” is one of the ways I to try to get the reader into a participatory circumstance with the poem. I toyed with calling it (among other things I no longer remember) “Anecdote of the Map,” but in the end I liked the intimacy of “house.” “Map” seemed a little too abstracted to me, though now, looking back at it, I kind of wonder if that might have worked better.

I keep a little notebook with me at all times, and in it I write whatever comes to mind. That’s where I get most of the lines and titles that I use. I’m not sure in this case which came first, but I usually always write from a title first, though I often go back and revise the title later. I change things a lot. I like to revise. “You must revise your life,” as they say.

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Three More Poems to Note:

"What We're Up Against"

"Poem for the End of January"

"In the Direction of X. In the City of Zero."

***

Poet's Biography:

John Gallaher is the author of the books of poetry, Gentlemen in Turbans, Ladies in Cauls (Spuyten Duyvil, 2001), The Little Book of Guesses, winner of the Levis Poetry Prize, from Four Way Books, and Map of the Folded World, from The University of Akron Press, as well as the free online chapbook, Guidebook from Blue Hour Press. Other than that, he's co-editor of The Laurel Review and GreenTower Press. Currently he's working on a co-authored manuscript with the poet G.C. Waldrep, titled Your Father on the Train of Ghosts, which is forthcoming from BOA Editions in Spring 2011.

For more about this poet see his blog: Nothing to Say & Saying It .

***
Purchase Information: University of Akron Press and elsewhere on the web.

***

Upcoming on Pages Rustle: work from Brian Daldorph's From the Inside Out: Sonnets

***

Summer & Such

2009-06-27T15:38:00.002-06:00

The house became available earlier than expected and we've been moving and settling in and making new homes for everything. The poetry books abound and no longer are stuffed in a back room out of view. I'm thrilled to have bookshelves aplenty in the new house and at hand!

I will be back with more Pages Rustle in the near future. After a little break from poetry, it starts whispering once again and I can't ignore it for long.

Happy Summer & a very Festive 4th of July to you!

Pages Rustle: Featured Poet Amy Fleury

2009-05-10T09:23:00.011-06:00

Every few weeks, I'll be featuring a new poem, my thoughts on the work, and a conversation with the poet. I hope you'll enjoy and come back again for the next installation!

This week's poem from :

Beautiful Trouble

by Amy Fleury

Crab Orchard Series in Poetry

Southern Illinois University Press

Commotions of the Flesh

after a line from Epicurus

To live in the world
is to live in the body,
the deepest heap of wants.

To hell with the mind
and is pursuit of its own
proper good. I am concerned here

with the commotions of the flesh.
Living in the fissure between desire
and the having, I have failed,

failed, failed to control myself.
From tooth to tongue, gullet to gut,
I have taken in the religion

of pork chop and gin, tasted
red meat and confection,
nectarine and absinthe.

And I have been pulled along
by the wild vein-song of sex,
the hunger that coils in the blood.

My children sing out to me
from their hammock between my hips;
they coax my fingers to touch.

Forgive me my weaknesses,
for bleeding and sweating and snoring,
for giving in to gravity’s tug.

Forgive my shivering, these tears,
this stomach rumble and bone-racket,
this agitation of the willful heart.

***

As the old saying goes “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” and the speaker in “Commotions of the Flesh” clearly knows about weakness in the face of temptation. What I like about the poem is that it takes on some heavy theological concerns: what to do with ourselves when we have God that gives us a messy disobedient body and then asks us to deny that body? She says she won’t address the mind thereby eliminating the need to address other struggles: those of faith, doubt, intellect, meaning and understanding. We have a hard enough time with the body alone.

Even though the speaker says “to hell with the mind” the whole poem is filled with motion, the verbs throughout: pursuit, pulled along, coils, sweating, rumble, agitation. These all show the speaker’s mind in conflict and in turmoil, not in peaceful repose. The speaker demonstrates the difficulties of being in the world, and of failing to do the difficult things that are asked of us.

We’re only different from the animal rule of instinct by our ability to reason, to deny ourselves these desires of the sensual world: our “deepest heap of wants.” And how often the mind fails to control the body’s deep instincts: we drink too much, eat too much, and let our drive for sex overwhelm our mind’s “pursuit of its own proper good.” How difficult is “control,” when it means attempting to overcome what we’re physically hardwired to do? The poem takes us right back there to the Garden, where we try to not eat of the forbidden fruit.

The poem doesn’t give us the stereotypical apple but provides us instead with “pork chop and gin” and “nectarine and absinthe.” (With that “sin” unmistakable in the middle.) After a stanza that ends with “religion” these shine in high relief as things denied: the unclean meat, the alcohol, the sweet flesh of the nectarine standing in as the fruit of knowledge. The next stanza even hints at the serpent that led to damnation, here as “the hunger that coils in the blood.” What can we do in the end but ask for forgiveness and live with our “willful heart,” our agitated, troubled selves with choices always before us, always the apple there within our reach.

***

Q & A with Poet Amy Fleury

Q: I often wonder where the seeds for poems come from. You quote Epicurus at the start; what were you reading when you began to form this poem? Or can you tell us a little about how this poem came to be?

Amy Fleury: I was actually reading Marcus Aurelius's Meditations in which Aurelius quotes Epicurus extensively. This was the match that lit the bit of kindling I'd already had, which was the first stanza of the poem: "To live in the world/is to live in the body,/ that deepest heap of wants." I'd been pushing that phrase around for awhile, but that just seemed too aphoristic. Sometimes you just have to wait around for something to knock loose the rest of the poem, and that is what happened with this one.

Q: The speaker of the poet says "to hell with the mind" but the whole question of the poem seems to be questioning if the mind is actually capable of controlling the body, do you think this is a question that poetry can address and provide a satisfactory answer? Should poetry even try?

Amy Fleury: Poetry should try everything, but having said that, I'd also say that I believe poems, and art in general, should be more about asking than answering, more about nuances than absolutes. I suppose this is the same as Keats's notion of negative capability--to live with mystery and uncertainty without the need to resolve them. The irony, of course, is that one can't ever wholly dismiss the mind, just as one can't dismiss the body.

Q: In a way, this poem acts much like one of John Donne's sonnets, at the end there's a bit of a turn and it is difficult to tell which way to read those last two stanzas and I like how there's a bit of ambiguity there for the reader. Do you read Donne? Do you see any of his influence in your work, here?

Amy Fleury: It's been many years since I've actively read Donne, though I spent a great deal of time with his poems and those of other Metaphysical poets when I was a student and admired them very much. Your question prompted me to flip open the Holy Sonnets and my eye was immediately drawn to the nineteenth which begins:

Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in
devotion.

Struggling with contradiction seems to be a central occupation of life, for instance considering what we ought to do and what we want to do (which is not always contradictory).

Q: After reading this poem, it seems that the world is full of both wonder and temptation, is this the "Beautiful Trouble" of the book's title?

Amy Fleury: Interestingly, I didn't realize how obsessed I was with this until after I'd compiled the manuscript, which really speaks to the revelatory nature of the writing process. It comes up again and again in the poems, how we need sorrow to know joy, hunger to appreciate satiety, trouble to recognize peace, and so on.

***

Three More Poems to Note:

"Aurelia Waiting"

"A Prayer for Intercession"

"Sonnet for Dissonance"

***

Poet's Biography

Amy Fleury is a native of Nemaha County in rural northeast Kansas, and graduated from Nemaha Valley High School. She earned her bachelor’s degree and her M.A. from Kansas State University, Manhattan, and her M.F.A. from McNeese State University.

Fleury’s work has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, North American Review, The Southeast Review, Laurel Review, 21st, and The Yalobusha Review. Southern Illinois University Press published her first collection of poetry, Beautiful Trouble, in 2004. It was the winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, and was also included in a list of 100 notable books of 2004 published by The Kansas City Star. Her book was given the number one spot on the “cream of the crop” list, the top ten of the 100 originally listed.

Amy Fleury has been a recipient of the Nadya Aisenberg Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony and a Kansas Arts Commission fellowship in poetry. She lived in Topeka, Kansas, where she taught creative writing for ten years at Washburn University, where she was Professor. As of the Fall of 2008, she became the poet in the M.F.A. program at her alma mater, McNeese State University. Biography from poet's page at : Kansas Poets

For more about this poet see her pages at the Map of Kansas Literature .

***

Purchase Information:

Southern Illinois Press and elsewhere on the web.

***

Upcoming on Pages Rustle: work from John Gallaher's Map of the Folded World.

***

Draft: With Light

2009-04-27T22:48:00.007-06:00

It's spring again, tornado season in Kansas. Last year, we were witness to the aftermath of the one that touched down in Manhattan. This year, another one has passed closely by in my county. You can see a fairly close up view of it in this video. Too close for comfort in my opinion.

So, not surprising, that my draft for the NaPoWriMO ends up with a tornado in it:

With Light
(a draft, by Amy D. Unsworth)

All day the sky brooding
the children muddy, the dogs picking
delicately across the soggy yard.

The sky, oh pewter sky,
how tired we grow of your threats
your clouds bunched into fists.

The long finger of the tornado
scraped across the plains
a welt, a warning. We’re not

comfortable yet with spring
with the grass grumbling
upwards, the mosquitoes

writing their memoirs
across the face of the ponds,
the sun-drunk cows swishing

away the flies. We cower
under the stairs, padding
ourselves with pillows.

Nothing comes of this:
pajamas soaked with sweat
the night interrupted

with lightning and hail.
Oh give us back our sleep
let the leaves remain

the branches unbroken
the flowers cup’s upturned
the frogs in their amorous chorus

along the banks of the drainage
ditches. Why this swollen ground
the carcasses of the worms--

winter was unkindness enough
the world shrunken and cold.
Give us spring, the air filled
with nothing but light.

***

Earth Day and Effort

2009-04-23T13:51:00.006-06:00

Like many people, I'm tired of plastic bags that fly into the tree tops, clutter the streams, and pollute the ocean. It's the everyday things that add up over time. A plastic bag to carry home the gallon of milk, the carrots, the apples. A plastic bag to carry home the book from the bookstore. To carry home the pair of socks, the bottle of wine, these all add up to an enormous amount of waste. It just takes a little more effort, to find alternatives. I've been using the "store" bags for awhile (but they can't be washed), the bulky canvas bag (take up a lot of room when not in use), but recently I found these bags at a small shop in Leavenworth. It rolls up into a little pouch that is easy to carry around with me, it's comfortable to carry over the shoulder even when it's full. All in all, a great little bag to prevent more plastic bag spawn in the world. You can have one too: EnVbags. They come in different colors if truffle isn't your flavor.

Sure, it takes a bit of effort to buy and plan to have your bags with you when you shop. But do you know about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch where plastic is taking over the ocean, swirling together in a vast mire of tangles? The Smithsonian magazine awhile back had a photograph of a sea bird's dissected body that was stuffed with plastic that it had mistook for sea life. The bird had starved to death because the digestive track was blocked with our wastefulness, because we use up and throw away and don't look back. If you don't want to buy a bag, specially, then reuse the next bag that you're handed. Every time we reuse one bag, we reduce the demand for them. Think of it this way:

It's easy to say "no thank you" to a bag at the counter. In the long run, it's good for the stores too to not have to pay as much for your shopping bag. Even if it's a fraction of a cent, they'll keep more profit on the sale, which should make stores happy too.
Even if you return your bags to a recycle center, every extra use of a bag saves energy on the cost of transporting the recycled material and saves the environmental impact of the re-creation of a new bag.
If you know you're going to the store, grab the bags. No room in the house? That's great. Store the bags in the trunk of your car. Then even if you're just dropping in for an after work snack, you still have a bag at hand.
The more people who make an effort, the more people will make an effort. The normal thing should be for us to provide our own, reusable, cartons and boxes for our purchases.
Why not try? So we can't all be perfect, we might sometimes still end up at the end of the day with an extra plastic bag, but if everyone tries, it will start to add up. One step at a time.

There are many poets who write about the environment. Try this essay from Gary Snyder or read some of his poems. I hope that we have a reason to write nature poetry for generations to come. Hopefully the image of the plastic bag in the treetop will be an image of our lifetime alone.

Pages Rustle: Featuring YOU!

2009-04-20T21:12:00.002-06:00

If you like the new feature "Pages Rustle" here at Small Branches Poetry and would like to have a feature starring a poem from your book and a conversation with you, please let me know so that we can arrange all the various details.

I have several more poets in the queue: Amy Fluery, Tim Mayo, Brian Daldorph,and Carol Levin, thus far.

Happy Poetry Month!

Drafts & "How To"

2009-04-20T20:02:00.005-06:00

For National Poetry Month, it's been a good April. I've been participating in a poem-a-day project which has produced several drafts I'm really pleased with, plus several more that might have productive strands to work with as revision time swings round. Here's a sample from a longer draft:

Write from the square space of your office,
of the way the paper clips
can only think of tangling together
how these become us
boxed in the days outlined on the calendars:
blank squares marching across the page

And several more poems from the circus, a theme I've been working on for some time now. What I haven't written, surprisingly to me, are more poems for the manuscript-in-progress. I don't know what that means, really. I'm starting to feel like I've finished that narrative and now need to begin the slow tedious process of actually putting the poems in their best order so that I can send it out into the world. This may have to wait until summer, or at least for a long, uninterrupted weekend.

***

Just a few days ago, I was able to go hear Sandra Cisneros speak at the public library in Kansas City. Now, this public library isn't like the libraries I grew up with. The library is a beautiful venue for a reading, the evening light was flowing in through the upper story windows, fluted pillars stood guard around the neat rows of wooden folding chairs. By the time she rose to speak, the room was overflowing with people.

Sandra Cisneros read and spoke mostly about being a writer, developing into a writer. She read "buttons"- the small essays that string together to form her books-- from her new book-in-progress to be called "Writing in Your Pajamas." She spoke about thinking in two different languages, creating space for one's self, things she's learned about finding her voice (the voice of a person completely comfortable, in her pajamas)

The audience was very receptive to her and asked many questions in a mix of Spanish and English. She shared with us her "top ten" things to do to develop into a writer. (You'll have to buy her book; I'm not telling!) And she also shared that writing requires both humility and courage, and that we should ask for these things each time we sit down to write. There were several other ideas that resonated with me "You don't know what you're writing about until you finish" "You don't always like what you find out about yourself" and best, perhaps "Write about your community with love, because someone else will write about it without love" (These are from my faulty notes, so not really direct quotes)

She also defined her vison of feminism as "human rights based with a compassionate outlook towards women." She also reiterated the need for writers to write and shared that she struggled with "what good is my writing; should I be doing something more practical?" when writing The House on Mango Street. But it was evident just from the crowd's reaction to her that she has done good work with her writing, showing as one person put it "that voices from the barrio could be heard."

She also encouraged us that we could change the world through small acts, through changing ourselves. I think that's another point on which we agree. I am reminded of Mother Teresa's words:

"We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

It's nice to hear that writing counts as one of those small things.

***

Pages Rustle: Featured Poet Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

2009-04-16T21:00:00.001-06:00

Each week through April and into May, I'll be featuring a new poem, my thoughts on the work, and a conversation with the poet. I hope you'll enjoy and come back again for the next installation!

This week's poem: "Conviction" from:

Work is Love Made Visible

by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

West End Press

***

Conviction

To the topmost branch of the cedar tree
that has lost most of its limbs to one storm or another
the mockingbird has returned.
He swings with delight on the supple branch
as it bends and sways in the gusty March wind.
He chortles his song and everyone else's
and answers my out-of-tune whistle with glee.
Does he not notice that each year his favorite tree
stands more bare and scarred, that it
weeps great rivers of fragrant resin and groans
and creaks at the slightest spring breeze or
is this his reason for returning, that
the tree could not survive the winter without
the conviction that the mockingbird would return
to sing of regeneration to newly forming branches
and to bring gladness where once there was only despair.

***

Most of us are familiar with the mockingbird, that jack-of-all-songs in the garden and fields, which is why he works well as a metaphor in this poem. "Conviction" is a poem that comes late in the book, a book filled with people: mothers, sisters, brothers, but mostly the women of the family who have been the keepers of the family stories, the ones who put down roots, whose work is made visible through plates delivered to customers at diner tables, through gardens filled with tomatoes, through handmade garments. So, it's a bit of a surprise to come across the bird and this broken tree, and a poem that seems to be a fairly straightforward and descriptive.

It's a lovely poem about what endures, how much we measure by what we've lost and perhaps more importantly, how too often we see the world not for the possibilities inherent but defined only by what is missing. I like how this poem slyly addresses the cyclical nature of the family, showing how grief and loss ebb and flow, how the losses in the family appear more evident, more damaging, to those who stand between generations, and especially so to those who are the storytellers and who chronicle the family's history.

The mockingbird, who we're never sure if he's chortling with us, or at us, acts to reframe the brokenness of the world into possibility. Even if the tree (and then by extension, the family) has lost branches, suffered trauma, and continues to suffer because of those losses, there's still the hope for future generations, continued growth, and a renewal come spring. And of course, the bird could be wrong, too. Too many branches might break; the tree could at last succumb to the weather, to the storms that have battered it. But this is how we go on, the new springs from the old which falls away, in turn. Perhaps, the mockingbird in this poem might just be that “thing with feathers,” hope for the future embodied and all of our songs remembered and sung back to us.

***

Q & A with Poet Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

Q: Tell us a little bit about the photos that punctuate the book. Did you use the photos as writing prompts?

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish: Well, not exactly. Most of the poems in the book were already written when I discovered in my granny's album the photo-postcard of my great-great grandmother and the handwritten note on the back of it that closes the poem, "This is where I feed the hungry." I knew some of Grandma Mary Ellen's story, about how she'd lost her husband and
sons to a mysterious poisoning, but I did not know what happened to her after that. That poignant line, scribbled in pencil on the back of the photo, made me want to find out more about her, and then the poem happened around her story. Only after writing this poem in response to the picture did I realize that many of the poems I'd been writing could be attached to family photographs and movies. It may be that I had carried the images I saw in photo albums and during holiday movie nights in my head so long they became poems. My mother was astonished when I began asking for very specific photographs that I had not seen in years, but remembered clearly. I asked for the photos after I wrote the poems, though, so they weren't prompts in the usual sense, with the exception of "A Woman's Inheritance," which was a revision of a poem I'd been trying to write for a long time but that had resisted my efforts until I found the photos of my Aunt Polly as Rosie the Riveter and of the mysterious woman holding a baby in a christening gown. Both photos are directly referenced in the poem.

Q: There is an earlier poem in the book, "My Sister's Sacrifice." How do you see these two poems working together?

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish: This is one of the poems for which I requested a photo that my mother didn't remember having until she looked through her album. I recalled visual images of actual events that seemed to be reenactments of what turned out to be a perfect recollection of the photograph. It's as if my memories of the many, many, "last times" I saw my sister, as she was leaving, had become crystallized in my mind in the form of the remembered photo. The palimpsest imagery of "real memory" and "memory of photo" is very difficult to explain! However, discussing the poem's memory/imagery is actually less difficult than discussing its emotional genesis, even though my sister has recently returned to the family. For me, this poem is an act of forgiveness and an attempt to reach across a great emotional divide. It wasn't until I received your reading of "Conviction," in preparation for this interview, that I could see the connection between the two. I wrote "Conviction" for my husband who is figured as the (actual) mockingbird in the (actual) tree in our back yard. It is he who patiently taught me how to love with trust again, and through the poem "My Sister's Sacrifice" I attempted to refract what I had learned through his love and his patience with me into my relationship with my sister. I want to thank you again, Amy, as I did in our correspondence, for your sensitive and thoughtful reading of "Conviction," which has shown me connections I didn't consciously realize were there.

Q: There's a sense in this poem of the essentialness of returning again to home. Do you see yourself, too, as the bird who comes back home to retell and thus preserve the family through poetry?

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish: I came home driven by a profound land and sky homesickness, so strong it had physical components. I wonder if birds have a similar feeling when migrating back to their nesting grounds from winter roosts? Much of my family had moved, so the overwhelming ache for home I felt was truly about place, not about family. Perhaps can we call it, in reference to the literary, "sense of place" dysphoria? I left Wewoka, Oklahoma as soon as I graduated from high school; like I was "shot out of a cannon" as they say around here. Like lots of other small-town kids (Dorothy, are you listening?), I was hungry to see the
world and to have what I was sure were exciting new experiences unavailable at home. About twenty-five years later, I accepted the visceral fact I could not physically separate myself from Oklahoma any longer. I needed the lightning storms, the tornadoes, the exquisite cornflower blue sky, the spring dominated by purple (red buds, henbit), the purifying late-summer heat, the unrelenting wind. I also admitted to myself that it was against my raising to complain about my state's shortcomings from a distance and not do anything positive to
help. I came back in 2003 and I continue to put my shoulder to the wheel in many different venues to do what I can with my capabilities to help make Oklahoma the best place it can be, culturally, socially and educationally. Of course, realizing "you can't go home" and/or "going home" both have powerful emotional and metaphorical associations that are deeply tied to ideas of family and origins, so to make the choice to come home also meant, for me, to take up my family obligation as "the writer," which includes "the family history keeper," "the poet," and "the one who writes our obituaries."

***

Three More Poems to Note:

"Falling Stars"

"Story Teller"

"For Michael"

***
Poet's Biography:

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish is a native Oklahoman returned home after twenty years to study for her PhD in American Literature and to grow good tomatoes. Her poetry collection, Work Is Love Made Visible, was published by West End Press (in distribution partnership with the University of New Mexico Press) in March 2009. She lives in Norman, Oklahoma, with her husband, an engineering professor; they have a combined family of three sons, all between the ages of 17 and 19. Her mother and grandmother live just down the road.

She has participated in poetry readings and workshops for more than 20 years, including repeat performances as a founding member of the Woody Guthrie Poets at the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma. Other venues include Telluride Institute’s Native American Writers Program; The Taos Poetry Circus Invitational Reading; Red Dirt Book Festival; Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, C.W. Post Poetry Center at LIU; New York State Writers Institute Community Voices Series and Readings Against the End of the World, both in Albany, NY; and The Knitting Factory in New York City.

Jeanetta’s chapbook, Tongue Tied Woman, won the Edda Poetry Chapbook Competition for Women in 2002. She has published poetry recently in LABOR: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, Oklahoma Today, Poetry Bay, and in “Walt’s Corner” of the The Long-Islander. Mish’s creative non-ﬁction essay, “This Oklahoma We Call Home,” appeared in the Fall/Winter 2008 issue of Crosstimbers. Anthology publications include poems in Returning the Gift and The Colour of Resistance. Jeanetta gives workshops in schools and libraries for both the Oklahoma Arts Council’s Teaching Artists’ Program and the Oklahoma Humanities Council’s Poetry Out Loud! Program.

For more information, visit http://www.tonguetiedwoman.com/.

***

Purchase information: University of New Mexico Press and elsewhere on the web.

***

Pages Rustle: Featured Poet: Carole Weatherford

2009-04-06T10:00:00.003-06:00

Each week through April (possibly longer!) I'll be featuring a new poem, my thoughts on the work, and a conversation with the poet. I hope you'll enjoy and come back again for the next installation! This week, a "Blog Tour Stop" from Carole Weatherford as she discusses her book this week across several different blogs!

Featured Poem: "Intro: What Shall I Say" from:

Becoming Billie Holiday

by Carole Weatherford

Boyds Mills Press/Wordsong

Carole Weatherford's introduces the poem:

When the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit debuted in 1939, Time Magazine’s music critic described Holiday as “a roly-poly young colored woman with a hump in her voice,” the critic claimed that the singer was drawn to “Strange Fruit’s” blues-i-ness rather than its social content. The critic ultimately dubbed the song “a prime piece of musical propaganda” for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Becoming Billie Holiday imagines the response of 25-year-old Billie to the 1939 article.

Intro: What Shall I Say?

The way Mom toted around
that magazine with my photo inside,
you’d have thought
I was Woman of the Year.
I don’t blame Sadie. Wasn’t everyday
that a colored face appeared in Time;
let alone her only child.
I was proud too till I read
what that two-bit critic wrote.
Called me “roly-poly;” said I wouldn’t diet,
was stuck on my own voice
and cared for tunes but not the words.
What did he know
about my taste in food or music?
I never even talked to the cat,
and he dare not cross my path.
If he does, he’ll get a mouthful,
hear just how I got to Harlem
and became Lady Day.
Oh, the tales I’d tell.

***

This poem (and the project as a whole) desires to set the record straight, to portray Lady Day in a sympathetic light that honors her way of understanding her world, her desires, and to reclaim her personal voice to work in counterpoint to the way Billie was portrayed in the media.

Even though there are historical documents that can be accessed, such as the one from the Time, they only tell part of her story and often from an arm's length distance but the poems invite us in for a closer examination of Lady Day's life and experience that still are relevant and fascinating today. Here's what Carole Weatherford says about the project:

Billie Holiday is my muse and she herself enlisted me to write her book. Ialmost didn't write it for fear that it would have limited appeal. Then an
eighth grade girl admiring Billie's likeness at the Great
Blacks in Wax Museum convinced me that Lady Day never ceases to
be hip.

I wrote this book because Billie deserves to be better understood. I tried to portray her with empathy. My advance copy of the book arrived the day after what would have been Billie’s 93rd birthday—a belated gift. I thanked her for letting her song come through me.

***

You can find out more about the book at the publisher's site: Wordsong
and read more of her discussion on how her verse memoir Becoming Billie Holiday came to be as Carole's blog tour continues this week.

Next stop: April 7th at Beth Revis's blog : Writing It Out where Carole talks about her inspiration and approach to writing the poems.

***

You might also be interested in listening to Lady Day sing her iconic song:

"Strange Fruit"

and if you're a jazz fan, here's a review of the book from all about jazz.

****

Carole Boston Weatherford is a New York Times best-selling author and has 32 books of poetry, nonfiction and children's literature, including Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, winner of an NAACP Image Award, Caldecott Honor Medal and Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration. Becoming Billie Holiday and Before John Was a Jazz Giant both won Coretta Scott King Honors; Birmingham, 1963 won the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award and the Jefferson Cup; The Sound that Jazz Makes won the Carter G. Woodson Award from National Council for the Social Studies; and Remember the Bridge: Poems of a People and Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins both won North Carolina Juvenile Literature Awards. Her books have been short-listed by the International Reading Association, National Council for the Social Studies, and Bank Street College of Education and named best books of the year by the American Library Association, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and New York Public Library. Winner of the Ragan-Rubin Award from the North Carolina English Teachers Association and a two-time North Carolina Arts Council Writers Fellow, Carole teaches at Fayetteville State University and resides in High Point, N.C., with her family. A Baltimore-native, Carole is the daughter of Carolyn Boston and the late Joseph A. Boston, Jr.

***

Purchase Information: Amazon and elsewhere.

***

Memorable Poem: by PJ Taylor

2009-04-01T13:34:00.005-06:00

When I first found the poetry community on the internet, I first participated at the poetry workshop at the Melic Review and also at Alsop Review's Gazebo. I remember reading this poem "To Jen, Who Died this Winter" by PJ Taylor in workshop. It's one of those poems that make you catch your breath. I'm happy to have found it again on the web. While we're celebrating poetry month, I hope you'll take the time to read her poem which first appeared in DQM Review in 2002.

Pages Rustle: Featured Poet Kevin Rabas

2009-03-24T16:33:00.023-06:00

Second in the series Pages Rustle is a poem by Kevin Rabas. Each week through April (possibly longer!) I'll be featuring a new poem, my thoughts on the work, and a conversation with the poet. I hope you'll enjoy and come back again for the next installation!

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Featured Poem "Mermaid and Drowing Sailor" from:

Bird's Horn & Other Poems

By Kevin Rabas

Coal City Review Press

****

Mermaid and Drowning Sailor

I.

Tonight, under the full moon, she has gone
underwater, her red hair thick and flowing
just above some underwater jet stream, billowing
up, her fingers touch, naked, she looks into the drowned
sailor's eyes, waiting. Will he awaken? Behind her,
the glass, placid face of the water.
Above, shining through, the cosmos,
and some galaxy she feels tonight, forming, nascent,
behind her, lit also by the lights of his boat, overturned,
spectral highlights warming her kelp hair. She descends,
tracking the drowning man, watching, praying.

II.

Clown fish gather, sea horses,
anemone move their porcupine quills.
No luck. More bubbles escape
the side of the sailor's mouth, a pearl necklace
of air, escaping; one half of the lung going.
This does not faze her, his body softening,
the body giving now to the underwater jet stream,
gaining speed, drifting quick. She follows quickening,
tracking, her eyes darkening, sensing he may awaken;
he may awaken, before his corpse settles at the edge of the abyss.

****

There is a sense of strangeness and wonder in this poem: the telescoping view of the ocean, sky, cosmos, all acting as concerned but unhelpful witnesses; the artful details of the sailor's death; the uncrossable abyss, the otherness, that divides the inhabitants of the ocean and the drowning man. I'm intrigued by this mermaid, another of those mythical sirens who draws men down to where they cannot survive, with her (almost) innocent, prayerful curiosity, her desire to see him awaken in her realm, her universe.

I can't comprehend all this poem offers on the first read; there's more to see, there's more to think about than the gloss of "mermaid watches man drown." The poem holds a myriad of possibilities, explanations, avenues of approach. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the poem is as a tale of lovers who cannot bridge their differences despite their best attempts. She is beautiful, he is swept away, he cannot thrive in her natural environment, though he's tried. His boat attests to his attempt.

But it's that idea of otherness, that prayer, that repeated "he may awaken;/he may awaken" as invocation, those hints that there is even more to grasp in this poem that makes me want to read the poem again. I feel the pressure of that sky, that galaxy over her shoulder, the man on the cusp between the vastness of the cosmos and the abyss of the sea. What is a human body? We are minutia, comparably.

We soften, we change, we age, we die. What more could the mermaid do? She knows no other way than this way of the sea, gill and fin. She cannot understand why the sailor (so alike her, yet so different) will not awaken. Aren't we as humans as strange to one another as the clown fish and anemone, and often as prickly? And when it comes down to another person's death(no matter how much they are cherished or loved) or even just in moments of crisis in another's life--what more could any of us think to do, besides watch and pray and hope and follow? And so often, we fail to comprehend what the small thing is that we could do to make things right. We miss the signs that would show us and allow us to reach out in help, one to another.

****

Q & A with Poet Kevin Rabas

Q: This poem is one of a few poems about the sea in your book. I'm reminded of the old joke about the sailor who takes his anchor and walks, finally settling where someone asks him "what is it that you're carrying?" How does a poet from Kansas end up writing poems about the sea?

Kevin: As you know, Kansas was once underwater. Almost everything we see in terms of the land is made out of oceanic sediment, and so perhaps the sea is still with us here, although the water has left. We can’t help thinking about it. My parents are from around Lake Wilson, and during their childhoods they could walk out into a field and find shark teeth. It reminded them of what the land they were standing on once was.

For this particular poem, I found inspiration in the foreign film Sex & Lucia. If I remember correctly the film opens with a male novelist naked and underwater in the ocean. It is night, and he is committing suicide. They surface together and make love. So, my poem, unintentionally, is a version of that opening. On the special features of the film, there is a still photo slide show, and from one of those slides I found the image I was looking for in the poem. There is the woman who “saves” the novelist, her hair spread out around her, underwater, and the lights behind and above her looks like stars and a glimpse at the universe. I thought she looked a bit like I imagine a mermaid might, and drawing upon the classic tales of sailors and mermaids, I started my poem. Also, of course, as a young person I was very taken with the Daryl Hannah/Tom Hanks movie Splash, about a mermaid who follows a man onto the land. So, I guess all of these things came together, much of it subconsciously, in the poem

Q: I know that many of your poems are jazz inspired, and maybe I'm just not enough of a jazz aficionado to see it, but is this poem linked to a particular jazz song?

Kevin: You know “All Blues” comes to mind as a jazz standard (“The sea; the sky; you and I”); however, I don’t know if I was thinking of it. I do try to get at jazz phrasing, when I can. I often write runs that are long and spur-of-the moment, as a bop player might, but there is a difference. I can go back and change them. I can revise.

Q: "Mermaid and Drowning Sailor" is in a section of your book that is titled "A Thousand Ways of Holding." I'm reminded of Derrida's idea of the supplement, that in a way we create objects (especially writing) to help us substitute for something that has gone missing in our lives, even though the created object also acts as a (sometimes unhealthy) reminder of that missing piece and prevents us from moving forward. How do you see the "Mermaid" poem and "Ways of Holding" interacting with each other?

Kevin: I was focused a lot on breath in this poem, thinking what would it be like to lose your breath gradually as you sunk? I swam competitively in high school and was a lifeguard for three summers, and so I remember that feeling, of losing your air and sinking, during extreme exercises and while wrestling underwater. Also, I was diligently practicing yoga in Lawrence when I wrote this poem, and part of my practice was to do exercises where I controlled and watched my breath. My yoga teacher was a good friend, and when I learned I would soon leave Lawrence, I knew I would miss her and the practice of yoga. So, breathing intentionally became attached to thoughts of separation and loss. I did focus on the ways of the breath, and yoga, when I wrote this poem. The bit about the lungs in the poem came right from what I was learning from that practice of intentional breathing.

Of course, the loss of anyone is a bit like a drowning. They sink into memory, and all I often remember are memories that are locked as images and words, as scenes—as sequences that mimic the episodes we see when we think we might lose everything, those snap shots or videos of our last moments that the brain triggers with its intense chemicals.

****

Three Poems More Poems to Note:

"First Evening"

"Tiger Shark"

"Reseed"

****

Poet's Biography

Kevin Rabas co-directs the creative writing program at Emporia State University and is co-editor of Flint Hills Review. He has two books of poetry, Bird’s Horn and Other Poems (Coal City Review Press) and Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano (Woodley Press). He is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry.

More about Kevin can be found at the Map of Kansas Literature and at the author's website.

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Purchase Information: Amazon.com and elsewhere on the web.

Pages Rustle: Featured Poet RJ McCaffery

2009-03-16T13:00:00.006-06:00

First in the new series "Pages Rustle" here at Small Branches Poetry is a poem by RJ McCaffery. Each week through April (possibly longer!) I'll be featuring a new poem, my thoughts on the work, and a conversation with the poet. I hope you'll enjoy and come back again for the next installation!

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Featured Poem: "The Raptors" from:

Ice Sculpture of a Mermaid with Cigar

by RJ McCaffery

three candles press

***

The Raptors

Come to the conservatory bloody and tangled
in wire, wings crushed by cars, or with a .22 gouge
through membranous mesh.

They come in milk cartons, washtubs, strapped
by belts, shrouded, tea towels over their heads.
They would break themselves further to escape.

There is no shame in the fight, the blood-spattering, the lash.
Their bodies, bound, fail--and there is no shame
in the slow slide to rot, as the rind over hollow bones
softens. Some die. And some entrenched, beat
against a dulling pain--and wait, and wait.

On the far wall, a light table casts a forest
of whitened branchings with darker breaks.
A large black bottle, the smooth instruments shine.

In her heavy gauntlets, the doctor leans over a hooded hawk.
Gray bones still showing, its unbound talons twitch.
Guess what? she whispers, reaching for a needle--You,
you get to live.

***

Many contemporary poetry books tend towards narrative, not necessarily a boldly announced plot, but sub-plots that act as anchors to the greater themes of the book. I'm a great believer in reading poems in context and enjoy the play between the individual poem and the larger stories presented in the book. It's fascinating how seemingly unconnected poems start to weave together to say something more, to tell a story. Or perhaps I'm just a reader who always looks for those threads.

"The Raptors" at first read seems to be a straight forward descriptive poem that tells of an encounter with an injured hawk during treatment. The description provides good detail--it's easy to envision yourself there, opening the box with the injured bird, hoping for the best. The comparison of the x-ray in black and white with the negative image of the bird with its gray bones works particularly well. It's a poem that deserves to be read more than once, and specifically, aloud. One of the excellent attributes of the poet's work is his attention to sound evident in this poem and many others throughout the book.

Perhaps the first clue that there might be more to the story is the ambiguity of the opening line's "Come." Of course, it can be read along with the title "The Raptors/Come to the . . ." but possibility of the imperative "Come" opens up the poem nicely to secondary interpretations which tie this particular poem in with one of thematic elements of the book: the death of a lover, early in life. Read with knowledge of grief--that which wounds, that which must be allowed to healed-- the poem opens deeper into an exploration of emotion and the long, difficult, process of recovering that cannot be rushed.

***

Q & A with Poet RJ McCaffery

Q: The Raptors" has a set of great images: the x-ray in contrast with the image of the bird itself. Any thoughts to why you decided to present the negative (static) image before the image of the live bird?

RJ: That's an interesting observation. I'm sure it wasn't conscious as I was writing the poem. Which isn't to say it was unplanned, as I have a very general-to-specific arc in the poem. I'm certain that I wanted to work through the inhumanity (or inbirdanity) of suffering/pain before settling on the human interaction ("you get to live") towards the end. So many ways to arrive in distress, so many things to cause pain. Then the one moment where the doctor focuses on the one bird, the one moment of speech/communication. And, often, the healing/treatment is a mixed blessing - the bird gets to live, but at further cost. A cost we as rational humans might have no qualms in paying. And so, too, perhaps the bird - just the basic will to live.

Q: In context with other moments from the book, I read the poem as an expression of the difficulties of healing from grief. How does this compare with your idea for the poem?

RJ: Yes. See above, also. The cure is also painful - what of the birds that died? Is it a reward to live in such distress? I chose not to answer that kind of question here.

Q:I like the attention to sound in this poem and others throughout your book. Is there a particular author that you read that helped you to develop your ear?

Lux as a tutor, and as for poets - Hopkins, Thomas are my mainstays. Lux taught me how to drive a long sentence - and while his works are musical, I tend to make mine a bit more ornate than his. Hence the Hopkins/Thomas. But not only and exclusively them. You know I think poems are an oppertunity to speak carefully and fully - to load every rift with ore (as Keats would say). There's no one source for speach in which all the tumblers line up. You hear it (not often) everywhere, from anyone. You just have to be attentive to it - the allied consonants/vowels, the stress rhythm in tension with the grammatical rhythm, etc.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add about the poem, a bit of the back-story, etc?

RJ: I knew a harpist who worked at an animal conservatory for birds in Georgia. I had been thinking about doing something in the wounded animal realm - the emotions of animals are so much purer in certain contexts. It just kind of all came together for me. I had been recovering from a debilitating illness myself (chronic, unfortunately) and had been reflecting on pain, giving up, not giving up, and the cost of all of it.

***

Three Poems More Poems to Note:

"The Angel of Sleep"

"This Book in Human Skin"

"Causes of Death in London, 1632"

***

Poet's Biography:

RJ McCaffery was born in Manchester, Connecticut. He attended Providence College from which he graduated magna cum laude with Distinction in English Literature. He subsequently completed his M.F.A. in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Since that time he has lived in: Providence, Rhode Island; Athens, Georgia; Hartford, Connecticut; and Washington, D.C.

Following the tradition of many writers whose loyalty is first given to writing, he has held a bevy of jobs, working as a technical writer for an environmental engineering group, a public librarian, an immigration interviewer, a census taker, a handy-man, a mortgage processor, a receptionist for a health center, a teaching assistant, a student loan counselor, a warehouse palate-jockey, an eggplant picker, a car-deliverer, a book binder, a photo-developer, a web-site designer, book-store clerk, an office manager, a night shift connivance store clerk, a comic book editor, and a theatre manager.

An avid bicyclist, he builds his own bicycles which range from junkyard recumbents to fixed-gear uprights.

In the fall of 2004, he entered Georgetown University Law Center in D.C., in pursuit of a J.D., and not being able (or willing) to escape from poetry, he's recently been as pleased as punch to take up an editorial position at the New Hampshire Review.

More information about RJ can be found on his blog at http://scoplaw.blogs.com/

***

Purchase information:

Ice Sculpture of Mermaid with Cigar is available through the publisher: three candles press and elsewhere on the web.

***

Comments & Conversation always welcome!

Announcing: Pages Rustle: A Reading Series

2009-03-15T21:48:00.003-06:00

I'm proud to announce a new series "Pages Rustle" here at Small Branches Poetry. Each week through April-Poetry Month (possibly longer!) I'll be featuring a poet, a poem from his or her book, and a bit of conversation, too.

If you'd like to be featured in the future, please contact me at the email address listed on my profile. I'm particularly interested in work by poets in the Mid-West. Suggestions appreciated!

Upcoming Featured Poets:

RJ McCaffery, Carole Weatherford, Kevin Rabas, Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, Tim Mayo, and more.

Poetry & Rain

2009-03-13T19:19:00.005-06:00

I'm really happy to announce that another couple of my poems are available online. The first is at The Pedestal Magazine (I thought I mentioned this already, but perhaps only on FB.) "A Day Beginning and Ending in Crows" This poem was written after one of the best days I had teaching my introduction to literature class; we went outside as a class and observed the world after reading Henry David Thoreau's essay on walking. Ah, good memories that.

The other can be found at ouroboros review. (If that link doesn't work try: here) The journal has a nifty "faux book" interface which is fun to play with. I forgot to see which page my poem is on, although I did go read it and noticed fellow blogger Dick Jones has several poems there as well.

It's another bird poem "Interviews for Spring." I do write about more than birds. Really. But this month it's birds when I'm growing tired of the real ones. Tired of their bickering on the back porch over the plentiful seed. It's spring, almost, they should be moving on, building their little nests, and sitting hunched over the eggs. I'm tired of the marauding robins, too. They used to come in pairs, now they flock like starlings or grackles.

But it's spring, one shouldn't complain. The grass turns green blade by blade. It's only raining poetry, and that is a blessing.

So, not only have I been writing and actually placing a few poems here and there, more poetry conversation is forthcoming. I am working on a series of conversations and interviews with poets over the next few weeks. If you'd like me to read and possibly talk about your work, please send a note. And check back soon!

Three Candles in Archive

2009-03-13T17:27:00.003-06:00

Some detective work today (ok, so it wasn't that hard!)

Three Candles has been moved to Archive and is now located at this link:
Three Candles in Archive all of the content should be there, waiting.

You can stop in and read several of my reviews there as well.

Mystery Solved.

A day of ebb and flow

2009-03-05T16:30:00.002-07:00

It's been a day where the bad and the good intermingle, sorrow tempered by joy, a pleasant thought balanced by unhappy news. It has been much like standing at the fulcrum of the teeter-totter, trying not to tumble down, trying to say the right things, trying not to retreat into the hollow of the self. Disappointment & happiness, such temporal things. There is often no clear path, no two roads diverging into a happy woods, only thicket and underbrush followed by unbroken plains of snow with no signpost pointing "this way." We just muddle through and keep our eyes turned to the light.

On Uncertainty

2009-02-14T19:00:00.004-07:00

The days slip towards summer, the sunlight lingering longer each evening, the maple with too early buds on the grey limbs in a false sense that spring is near, the birds however know better, still gorging on the seeds and suet, conserving heat, puffed in the bare limbs. The cold returns again with ice in the wind, spite against the window panes. One season each in this house, enough to know the wind creeps in, the fireplace nestles spiders, and the hawks prowl the skies over the tree filled slope leading away from the yard. A year, passes in moments and in long hours, tea steeping, bread rising, the dogs let in and out, pages turning, leaves blown curbside, snow piling on the railings, thaws and freezes, dust in the window sills. The landlord posts "for rent" and there is no destination in sight. If I am familiar with anything, it is uncertainty: the coin toss of hope and disappointment rising and falling. Yet, here is today to enjoy. The small moments that come and pass by. Coffee with cream, oranges on the countertop, candles lighting the living room, hands touching. The constant knowledge that soon the horizon could separate us sweetens the minutes. There are none to waste, love. Spring, just a matter of wind and sun, then summer, too soon.

April's Calling: Reading in Topeka at Top City

2009-01-23T18:54:00.003-07:00

I'm excited to announce that I'll be reading in Topeka Kansas at the start of Poetry Month! Dennis Etzel and Kevin Rabas have put together quite a nice reading series at Lola's Cafe. I've been fortunate enough to be able to attend several of the Fall's events and I'm looking forward to the Spring lineup as well. Please join me in April or say hello at one of the other scheduled readings!

Top City Spring 2009

Saturday, February 28, 2009: George Paris, K.L. Barron, and Raylene Hinz-Penner

Saturday, March 7, 2009: Tim Volpert, with special guests from UMKC: Piper Abernathy, Philip Estes, and Katie Galvin Clark

Saturday, April 4, 2009: Megan Kaminski, Amy Unsworth, and Serina Allison Hearn

Saturday, May 9, 2009: Jim McCrary and Judith Roitman

All readings are at Lola's in Topeka, Kansas (10th and Gage) and begin at 7:07--seven minutes after seven.

Print out your own flyer!http://topcitypoetry.blogspot.com/

Thinking of Korea

2009-01-14T12:39:00.004-07:00

Yesterday, the word. Korea looms on the horizon,
perhaps a destination, perhaps the place that separates
us. This land of pagodas and pools and many, many
people living knee to knee I can only imagine in snippets,
noodles and neon bustle companion to temples and
deep green forest trails. I hesitate, better together
than apart, no matter how far the destination.

And on yesterday, too word of another poet's death,
W. D. Snodgrass, whose delightful "Heart's Needle"
helped bring me to a life of poetry. Another candle
burns out, the afterimage remains when I close my eyes.

January 3rd

2009-01-03T18:51:00.005-07:00

and the day filled with melody
fingers on the keyboard
notes rising in the glint of afternoon
the murmur of conversation
punctuated by laughter and
the protests of a baby awakened
too soon from sleep.

On the Year's End:Considering the Sun in Absence

2008-12-30T21:58:00.004-07:00

On the Year's End: Considering the Sun in Absence

The sun has risen and fallen again, and elsewhere
must be rising on this last day of the year,
auspicious with eights and endings which
must be beginnings as the narrative will write
itself with or without adjustments and sidetracks
and lies. The year begins in hope, as it must, and the old
battered: a few photographs in frames, a number of lines
in neat order, piles of papers to file, stacks to purge and re-purge.
Sons taller, homes emptied, tidied and filled again. This
is how the story goes with false starts, with remarkable moments
once sworn to remembrance: but was it a sunrise or sunset?
Or, the way the half moon caught in the net of limbs, the prairie
covered in morning haze, smoke? Or, the owl posturing
as death reborn? There was a hill climbed, and the smell of paint
on a March afternoon, and many spiders removed stiff-legged
from webs, the stove’s redhead glowering and water rushing
into sinks and pans and saucers. Then whiskers,
on a son’s cheek, as he bends now to bid goodnight. And thus,
the sun rises and falls and the year begins anew.

Peace to You

2008-12-22T17:26:00.003-07:00

A little earlier than usual, I'm ready for the season. As a family we've planned a Medieval Feast with fairly authentic food, decorations, a newly designed family crest to celebrate Christmas Eve. Parsley bread is rising, the kitchen is chockful of lamb for stew, fish for roasting, and leeks, mushrooms and other vegetables to dice, saute and steam. There is a fireplace in our rented home, but it's not in working order, so we'll un-authentically bake with our oven and stir pots on our conventional stove. The pater noster is memorized, our characters thought out, the table to be laid with silver salvers and goblets. We have music to listen to, skits to perform, we'll make music, too with flute and recorder. And celebrate the birth of our Lord, in whom we delight.

May you be as blessed, this and every day.

Thoughts on Thanksgiving Afternoon

2008-11-27T14:49:00.002-07:00

Pioneers had the ability to make the most with what was on hand: a large orange squash, a handful of sugar, cream skimmed from the top of the milk bucket, rendered lard,flour,spice carefully hoarded to bring an autumn treat to the table. But more importantly they remembered to take time from their busy lives to celebrate, one with another, in thanks and praise for another harvest in the root cellar, another year's bounty, for the faces around the table.

May you too, recall the bounty you've been given and remember to give thanks where due. With gratitude, we acknowledge all we have been given and focus on these gifts, life, love, another day to witness the sun's rise and fall, the pattern of shadows and sunlight across the window pane, the beauty of a leaf, the smell of a wood fire burning. Simple things, peaceful things. Take a moment of quiet and feel yourself breathe. A gift, today.

Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!

Poem: How to Hold a Son

2008-11-22T22:29:00.004-07:00

How to Hold a Son
by Amy D. Unsworth

For a newborn the bend of your elbow
supports the head, the untrained neck.
Note the bunched face, the pulse
visible at the crown. Prop your arms
with a pillow. Don’t sleep.

At two pretend to be a zebra,
prance on all fours. Become
accustomed to carpets, grass.
Rediscover your knees, sitting
cross-legged. Laughing, he’ll
collapse into your arms. Hurry.

The five year old will bring tulips,
stemless. Or a ladybug. Find a bowl,
a stool, a magnifying glass.
Stand behind, peer at the dusting
of pollen. Hold the glass steady
to see spots and wings. Inhale.

At nine, tousle hair.
Carry the backpack, tuck in
an extra chocolate. In front
of friends, smile. Read about
dragons or mummies. Sneak
your arm around, let it settle.
Pull him close.

In the teens, persist.
Wrestle, slap backs. Knock first.
Attend ballgames and cheer.
Say it’s for your own sake.
Recall the ache in your arms,
the throb of his heart.
Let him leave. Learn to sleep.

From:
Not What I Expected: The Road from Womanhood to Motherhood

And then there is this, too!

2008-11-16T21:02:00.005-07:00

Editing work, completed.

Donna L. Potts and Amy D. Unsworth, eds.
Region, Nature, Frontiers: Proceedings from the 11th International Region and Nation Literature Association Conference.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2008.
ISBN 9781847184597.

Thanks to Donna Potts for the opportunity!

Thoughtful Gifts, Long Remembered.

2008-11-16T19:50:00.007-07:00

Looking back over my childhood a few gifts truly changed how I envision life: a pair of Appalachian clothespin dolls and a book of Willa Cather's short stories from my aunt, and a theatre experience planned by my grandmother. Other holidays came and went, in a blur of Christmas trees, the angel-hair drench tree of my grandfather's house, the children's tree downstairs at an aunt and uncle's home, the white tree displayed in the front window, the year my brother and sister and I decorated a real spruce tree with toys and while my parents were away only for it to crash down in the middle of the night. Now, I think of gifts for others and remember, too.

Something about the plain, tiny-featured dolls that evokes my childhood, beyond that particular year Christmas. I recall autumn weekends at Spring Mill, gathering sticks for a fire to roast marshmallows, the visits to the pioneer village, the cold water from the spring trickling by mossy banks. The pioneer apothecary shop with jars full of herbs and remedies, the bonnet-topped ladies in long dresses strolling in and out with their baskets, the stonewalled garden with the vegetables laid out in neat rectangles. The tidy utility of rooms meant for living, cooking, around a stone fireplace. The smell of woodsmoke on a clear night always made me imagine that pioneer life, those wooden cabins, and the damp chill of morning seeping in through the chinks as the fire burns low. Making do. My aunt had lived in such a cabin, north in Canada, to me a land of mystery and bears. The clothespin dolls now stand guard over my collection of antique books; they still make me smile.

The book of Cather stories too, brings to mind the pioneer days and the juxtaposition with urban society. The heartbreak and pride of working the land, the apparent ease of city life, and the squalor and hardship which was too often the true experience of the immigrant, the pioneer, the fool-hardy soul who hoped for more than the earth or the city was willing to give. Just south of where I grew up, there is a historical marker for Pigeon's Roost, where settlers were massacred men, women and children all. I grew up with a sense of being connected to this history, to the sense of adventure and possibility inherent in moving on and trying a new life elsewhere.

The practical side of me knew that pioneer life was hell on women, the old graveyards are full of babies, and women who died bearing them, the tin-types show women worn to a nubbin, aged beyond their years with sickly children peering out from behind their skirts. In Kansas and elsewhere on the prairie , they made lives out of the dirt, living in sod houses, trying to break the hills before the flint in the hills broke their will to try. It was cold in Kansas last year after the ice-storm, without electricity, in a modern home equipped with a fireplace--bone cold. Imagine an entire winter, with no light, little heat, tucked like a mole in the side of the hill. Imagine the damp, the heat escaping each time someone passes in or out, the impossibility of clean. The practical side understands why Paul, of "Paul's Case" made the fateful decision to run to the city, to the lights, the theatre, the warmth and abundance.

Tickets to the theatre,too, were a good gift: the lights and the wonder. The memories of dressing up, of occasion. That particular Christmas I was four, with a red long dress trimmed in white lace holding my grandmother's hand, following along, mesmerized by the width and the breadth of theatre, by the people gathered there to wait in the dark, for the storybook brought to life on the stage. There, then, anything was possible.

How it happened

2008-10-31T19:14:00.004-06:00

Much of the contents of the box were no longer treasure,
maps and diner placemats from long forgotten journeys by car
pamphlets and sights to see and contests by mail.
In her diary, the days marked mostly by weather, warm today,
much cooler this week, in a hurried hand. Thomas
MIA since June, the war department notified Elizabeth
on July 8th, no word since, the first entry for the year 1945
and in August in so few words, we've offered terms to Japan
and then a few days later, Papa's home early and off tomorrow
to celebrate the signing of the treaty--VJ day,-- the boys
will be home soon,and Papa's finishing the glass front cabinet
before he must go back to work. Then fall, with telegraphs
and holiday wishes, and the year ends, as it must, with snow.

Post-date Billing

2008-10-02T22:32:00.004-06:00

All night I toss and turn, dreaming of the doctor's office,
of the treatment room, of the intersection of the IV and
my veins. The half-awake sleep of chemotherapy
floating between the mind's desire to dream of health
and the physical body's agony. There are days I can't
remember: the first day of treatment, the day I refused
any drug they offered to calm my stomach, to relieve
anxiety, pain. The day I swore at the onocologist surrounded
by his interns. I do remember the following morning, the suprise
when the doctor asked if I had decided to live. I don't remember
asking to die. Last night, months from treatment, the anxiety
came back. This time, the dream of sickness, awaking
to health, to scars healed and fading, to home. I cannot
drink enough water to wash the taste from my mouth.

Big Ocean

2008-09-28T23:06:00.002-06:00

Little Fish
swim merrily on.

The Second of Autumn

2008-09-23T21:23:00.001-06:00

I’ve been guilty of spoonerisms today. I raise my hand to ask a question and I cannot speak aloud in a lucid manner. I tip over my trongue. Don’t listen to my mind racing ahead. On paper, on pixel, I manage just fine, thank you.

Some days one throws out a line, and draws in nothing but a wet hook. Today, splashes, ripples around me. I cast again. I cast again. The ducks chuckle in their low voices. The cars hum by, the faces anonymous blurs. In this moment, I gather them to me.

We speak of Narcissus and the Echo. Vanity. Wanting too much. In the muddy pond, the geese float by in legions. The leaves fall catching the light, each year I am caught anew by the subtleness, each year agog. Listen to this, I say, waving the sheaf aloft.

Contemplation: Identity Matters (part 2)

2008-09-18T16:34:00.004-06:00

I believe it is Lacan that says that our identities/perceptions are formed in the mirror of other people's minds. And so, others reinforce our own ideas of ourselves. Socially this makes sense: a father reacts positively to the child who "behaves" reinforcing the positive behavior he want to see. Tell a kid he/she is smart for a year and see what happens. If a person's action are received favorably, he/she will repeat that action. A baby smiles at another person, the person smiles back, the baby smiles. Most of the time, I believe we try to live up to the good. If a person hears negative remarks, she can choose to change behavior(accept the other person's verdict) or to continue to act in the same way(rejecting that verdict). Sometimes a person rebels against the perception/identity someone else has of them, forcing person #2 to change their perception. Either way, one (or both) of the two people involved will incur a change in perception and attitude. We react negatively to people who are not following the perception/identity we have created for them. We also react negatively to people who do not display the values and morals we trust in.

So, then, our own perception of ourselves is also constantly edited, shaped and changed by social interaction, by what we do, what we fail to do and how other people respond. We also become more like the people we choose to spend time with, emulating the behaviors we long for in ourselves. But we can never truly know another person, each of our evaluations are biased by what we can see/hear/empirical knowledge which is limited by the impossibility of being with someone constantly and the mediation between thought and spoken/written communication. We choose people who will reinforce what we like best in ourselves (whether we openly admit to those aspects of ourselves or not) including our values, morals, ethics, desires, and beliefs. The highest valued relationships are ones in which the other person best reflects our "best" self perception/identity. (Again, constantly in flux, with each person reinforcing the other)

For personal change, then, a person has to both change her own views of herself and change the response patterns of other people, editing her own perception of her-self and reinforcing other people's positive reactions to the desired change. (or responding negatively to their negative feedback) Or she leaves the others behind as their values, behaviors, desires no longer reflect her own. In new social situations, we choose how to present ourselves hoping to reinforce the best self identity/perception so that the new interactions provide the most comfortable reflection and we seek out those people we believe can help us learn/grow/change ourselves (or at least show us that our present self is acceptable.)

I think this is one of the reasons that people reject God. How vulnerable we are in the face of an omnipotent God who never changes. One who knows all our thoughts, our insecurities, our wrong doings. Rail against Him, He remains. Plead with Him, He changes not. We cannot cajole, demand, or persuade Him other than He wills. He will not be changed, we must change if we want to know Him. It is easier, safer, to reject that God, to say His way is "superstitious" or "a fairy tale" than to be willing the change our hearts to reflect Christ's way revealed in His Word. We fear might be asked to give up too much. We fear the rejections of other people, their negative responses to our relationship with a God who Knows. Especially since those other people are corporeal, empirical, near to us, and we can hide our secret hearts, our fear and weaknesses, from them.

We fear the surrender to a Way other than our own. But when we need comfort the most is often when we feel the most alone and the most cut off from human companionship. No other person knows, no one else can understand, no one else can share in our internal pain. How terrifying to be known, yet how we desire it as well. We see Him now as in a glass, darkly, the scriptures say. At first, this seems an impossible task, to see God's presence. We have to look, to seek to find evidence of His existence. Like the wind, which we cannot see, He touches the world around us. We can see Him in the action of those who know Him, and through His Word. I long not just to know Him more, but to be a good reflection of Him and His Love.

(more to come)

Contemplation: Fractal-ly Thinking (part 1)

2008-09-13T19:54:00.018-06:00

I've been visiting "electric sheep" recently and trying to comprehend what fractals are and how they are created. My questions led me over to the ever-readily-at-hand wikipedia where I'm able to read a definition, grasp at the concept, but still be a little fuzzy on what the math people might be talking about. I think I understand the basics of "what" but "how" is still evading me at the moment. In the simple explanation, it's a shape created by the replication of the same shape--it occurs in nature sometimes in plants like ferns. And it's rather how I was taught to draw a tree, a "Y" with branches splitting to branch again, and again. I find the fractals delightful to watch, even though I'm unable to distinguish the shape that is replicated in most cases.

From there, I began reading about "strange loops" Escher is known for these: hands drawing each other, staircases to nowhere, and such. But more interestingly, I found that there is a book by Douglas Hofstadter called I am a Strange Loop, which appears to be about soul, consciousness and its self-constructiveness. I read an interview which gives me a sense of the book's argument. But, I need to request this, and his earlier Gödel, Escher, Bach, from my library. I'm particularly interested in Hofstadter's theory about the "soul" (should we say "human essence"?) having more than just a single repository and how this relates to other ideas/theories I'm familiar with from literary and language theory, and more essential how it relates to my relationship with and understanding of God.

Oddly enough, Hofstadter also postulates about random experience suddenly revealing an order (do we impose this order? or was it there, waiting to be revealed all along?)

A turn of a kaleidoscope and all the randomness settles into a beauty of its own.

(more to come)

Even a sparrow

2008-09-05T15:25:00.003-06:00

In the bright afternoon light a sparrow mistook the reflected sky for sky. The thud of the impact drew our attention away from our books. How could we read with a sparrow stunned and trembling on the other side of the glass? The eyes blink, the chest rises and falls, the claws clench as if holding onto a branch we can not see. Will it die? my son asks. I don't know, I don't know. The sparrow breathes faster now.

I hold my son close to me and we watch this spark of life burn. Except his breath and his blinking pupil-less eyes, the bird lays perfectly still staring up. We dare not touch it; other birds raise a cry from the branches, entreating. We look at the patterns of the legs, the way the feathers lie close to the chest. God knows when even a sparrow falls. I can't bear to think of it dying, splayed on our deck. I pray aloud, for healing, for peace if the injury is too great. How many similar prayers have others said for me?

When I open my eyes, the sparrow's breath has slowed. Let's let it be. As I stand, the bird flutters then rises into flight. He'll have a headache, my son laughs. The sparrow becomes once again just one of the flock, chattering noisily in the backyard. Thank you. For the sparrow, for this day, for life.

Radio Signals in a Digital World

2008-08-26T19:38:00.004-06:00

My son, born under the Hale-Bopp coment, studies the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth and beyond. Based here on the mysterious spark of water and carbon, a chemical reaction perhaps, life. Out there, the telescopes scan the unknown, adding day by day to the reserve of human knowledge. Sending out into the vast Beyond a record of our human life meant to travel beyond our boundaries and limits in search of something more. We hope and dread some acknowledgement of our passing by. Is it not enough to reach out and touch each other?

There is more to learn than a lifetime can teach in the habits of the toads living in the damp recess under the deck with moss and the remains of last year's acorns. I unpry my son's hands to loosen his grip. For a moment the small creature stares up at us, white tipped toes splayed, heartbeat visible through the thin skin, the pouch at its neck inflating and deflating. We stare back, then watch him hop out into his world, our backyard now a toad's universe spiraling out into the woods beyond. We too are small and vulnerable, breathing deep when danger has passed, together amazed at what the day provides.

R. E. T. (Random Emotion Triggers)

2008-08-24T19:59:00.003-06:00

There are days where she cannot believe that death is a possibility. There is so much work to be done. Lessons to plan, menus, pajamas to fold, novels to read, three sons to feed. How is it possible that she must contemplate death while cooking rice for dinner, or walking the dogs along the tall corridor of trees? No one mentioned that the fear still could catch her unaware, with tears at unexpected moments, on the way home from the video shop, or peeling carrots, or combing her now shoulder-length hair. This time, a weekend movie set in space. Each individual made in duplicate, multiples. Memory transfered from the broken body to the whole. She holds her husband's hand, remembers how many times he's been the link that held her in this world, held her near to sanity when letting go, when ending the effort began to seem a viable option. And other times too, at football games, at the orchestra, as they held their sons in the moments after birth. Tonight she looks away, blinking, waiting for the fear to pass and the moment to turn to gratitude for another day alive, for another moment to watch and to be a part of it all.

One Year, Again.

2008-08-13T19:27:00.005-06:00

***
I've been to "one year" before, one and a half years ago. The doctor said to come back for a bit more blood work, for another scan. Those scans said: second primary tumor, hereditary. I wonder if the first cancer saved my life. There was no evidence, except in my blood. And no one would have been looking at blood under a microscope if I hadn't already been sick once before. Typical onset is 70, screening begins at 50, sometimes later. I was 35.

Monday was my "one year" from the end of treatment checkup. Last July during my 8th infusion of what was meant to be 12 doses of Folfox6, I began having trouble reading, then seeing, then breathing. Then I realized that I was having a reaction to the medications that were meant to kill the cancer cells. My face burned and I felt choked; I could hardly raise my voice to call the nurse. And in a flurry, a brief moment or two, the line was unplugged from the port.

The nurses called my husband and he drove from work to sit with me. For an hour, the nurses watched to make sure the side-effects were subsiding. I closed my eyes and practiced breathing until the air passed freely in and out of my lungs. My husband, held my hand. In my head, the storm of emotion raged, questions, doubts, and fear. If I could not continue these infusions, what would we have to do for treatment next?

After some time, the doctor returned to send me on my way home. What next? Clinical standards suggest twelve dose, but medicine is still a question, a guessing game, an art of conjecture, laboratory work, and faith. The reaction signaled the end of the chemotherapy and the start of wait and see. Now, blood work and scans.

Now attempt to return to normal life. Now the fog lifting, clarity, hope, and each day another chance to live better. To learn what I am meant to learn: mostly, that I cannot do it all on my own, no matter how able, how strong, how determined, how intelligent, how stubborn I may be.

***

Trade?

2008-08-12T18:57:00.003-06:00

In the dream, the group plans to trade one friend for the money to finance a holdiay blowout. Her life insurance will pay for presents, treats, wrapping paper, tinsel. She watches benignly as they collect their temporary treasures around them. Why? I ask. Everyone looks away

***

In the mirror this morning, I ask my reflection: what life am I trading? And for what?
For what?

***

At daybreak, I climb the hill on 20th Street. A buzzard rides on the updrafts, circling. A mouse lies dead on the pavement's edge. Today, I will trade for nothing that will not bring me joy. My son and I hokey-pokey down the hill, even as he protests. I choose these: long walks with children, dogs, and my life's love; the promise of new friends and places; the comfort of those who have shared my highs and lows; and the never-ending pleasure of words. What trinkets could compare?

***

Market Day

2008-07-30T17:22:00.004-06:00

The summer's long, humid days stretch on. Children in the street putter about on their bicycles, even their shouts have lost vigor. Paper and pencils, bright colored folders and lunchboxes fill the aisles at the stores. Days without routine blend into weeks, punctuated only by rain.

Today, we visited the local farmer's market: several vegetable stalls covered with canopies, a table of honey, and one of goat milk fudge. We bring our bag to carry our produce home, turning away the ubiquitous plastic sacks. The young man at the eggplant stall comments that it gives him hope to see more and more people with "green bags." I wish for a market basket, with a comfortable handle. We purchase a dollar's worth of roma tomatoes, an eggplant to fit my cupped hands, local honey for toast with butter, and a basket of okra pods. One feels hopeful at a farmer's market, however small, for the earth's bounty, for those who plant and reap, and for the long market tradition continued for yet another season.

Our routines begin to fall into place: Wednesday afternoon to market and library. In colored ink, the words march across the calendar.

Life, Re-Ordered

2008-07-24T19:53:00.002-06:00

The deck overlooks 13 acres of tangled woods, wildflowers, and a myriad of weeds. A path leads into the thicket, beckoning. The first morning, a doe and two fawns grazed just beyond the edge of the yard, in the midst of the purple flowers as yet unrecognized. A hawk krees overhead, perhaps leaving and returning to her young. Nuthatches, in their close knit group hop and bicker, feeding from the tree at the edge of the yard.

Slowly, from many boxes, books and pots, towels and candleholders emerge, shyly into this new place. We learn the names of the streets and avenues, locate parks and walking paths, answer other people's phone calls, reassure the dogs, find ways to make this, too, home.

Pause

2008-07-14T22:20:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow the madness begins in earnest. The cardboard boxes filling up the rooms, piles of paper, strangers in the house. Everything in a parcel, unhelpful labels on packed boxes, no room to move. In two days it will be over, loaded onto the truck, on the way to elsewhere.

Last night, home from my trip across five states, I found three zuchini and a tomato finally ready on the vine. A small harvest: tomorrow's dinner, with salt and pepper. A simple impulse in the midst of disorder. The mystery vine trails across the stone path, more tomatoes grow on the vines, absorbing the sun and heat. More profusion. The urge to grow amazes me.

The herbs fill out their pots. A moveable garden, to adorn the small house on the end of the street which will soon be, however temporarily, home.

***

The work awaits, the writing must wait, at least for now, on the blog. I'll be back, in a week or two after re-assembling our home. I'm pleased to know, however, that you'll be here online, when I return. Some things don't have to be uprooted. For this I'm grateful.

***

Smoke & Light

2008-07-04T21:51:00.003-06:00

For the last three nights, the firecrackers and roman candles have filled the air with a film of smoke and set the dogs' nerves on edge. Even tonight, after the town's display over the park, the noise continues, and will continue for hours.

Early in the week, the days are punctuated with short bursts of explosions, growing to tonight's peak: every street and cul-de-sac filled with children and laughter. The water hose and buckets at hand, we light our corner of the world, with sons grown tall. Five years in this place, a place one could call Home.

We say goodbye with sparks and smoke. We learn to sleep with the commotion.

***

Look, Every Day

2008-07-03T21:59:00.004-06:00

The gourd vine grows wildly again this year. A mystery. Baby pumpkins? Striped, winged gourds? Little white ones?

Out front, in the flower beds, a watermelon plant, perhaps from last year's Fourth of July festivities. A straggler, a weed. Is there time for it to bear fruit?

I don't know. I look every day, to wonder at the profusion.

Child, we've done our best.

Someone will have to weed and spread
The young sprouts. Sprinkle them in the hour
When shadow falls across their bed.
You should try to look at them every day
Because when they come to full flower
I will be away.

--from "Heart's Needle" by W.D. Snodgrass

Submit or . . .

2008-06-27T17:46:00.006-06:00

It seems that everytime I'm getting organized to actually send out my work, I have a technical glitch. Out of ink, the driver for the printer is mysteriously deleted, the kids have used up all of the printer paper to draw cartoons on, or I'm out of envelopes because the kid felt he should make packets of cartoons to send to *his* friends.

This week, it's my computer down. I did get a couple of email submissions out the door, and two paper packets out before the end of the month deadlines. I managed a few last month as well, so not too terrible, but not what I was hoping to get done before we packed up and hit the highway for our rather short move to Leavenworth, Kansas.

The move threatens to be all I can see right now. But when I'm busy, I need to write. So, I write. Life is good, no?

Sweet Tea and Summer Time

2008-06-27T17:19:00.004-06:00

Although I was born and (mostly) raised in Indiana, which many people wouldn't consider "The South," I know that summer has arrived when there are fireflies over the garden and sweet tea in the 'fridge. It took me awhile to realize, when we lived in Georgia, that you could actually order sweet tea at dinner out on the town. And no matter how lovely that might be, it's still not as good as homemade sweet tea, made with Lipton's, diluted with ice, and served in a tall glass. I've changed to de-cafe, otherwise I don't know that I'd sleep all summer long.

Fill a medium sauce pan with cold water, bring to boil, tie 12 tea bags together. When the water boils, take the pan off the burner and add the tea bags. Cover. Wait for 5 mins. while the tea steeps. Take out the tea bags, add 1c. sugar to the hot tea, stir until the sugar disolves. Pour in 1 gallon pitcher. Add a bit of cold water, espcially if you're using a glass jar, to fill about 1/2 of a gallon. Top the rest of the gallon with ice. Stir well. Enjoy on your front porch while watching robins, the neighbors, or whatever happens to lurk on your street.

Ah. Summer.

More on Gratitude

2008-06-17T09:56:00.003-06:00

I'm subscribed to Zen Habits, a blog that is probably best classified as a part of the "slow movement." Today's post is about incorporating gratitude in one's life. The post also is a challenge, which they ask the readers to share, so I'm sharing with you.

Characteristics of a Grateful Life

A life of gratitude is composed of three parts that combine to make a whole.

1. A sense of purpose in our lives

2. An appreciation for the lives of those around us

3. A willingness to take action to show the gratitude we feel

I think as a poet, I do pay attention and appreciate my life and the lives of others. I don't know that paying attention, alone, is enough. One of my shortcomings, I feel, is that I don't incorporate enough of the third characteristic in my life. Writing is often the most comfortable response; writing, though, is not always the most helpful response.

The challenge is expressed in practical (practicable) form:

* Spend three minutes every morning writing down a few things you are grateful for that day
* Devote a full morning or afternoon to composing a more detailed gratefulness list. (One tip: think both about what you are grateful for and also how you can show that gratitude)
* Make it a habit to encourage at least one person every day
* Review your finances to make sure they are in order and aligned with your values
* Plan something fun, like a trip to somewhere you’ve never been
* For one day (or more), say something positive to every person you meet

So, I'll start by adding three things I'm grateful (beyond my family-which of course tops my list each and every day) for this morning and I challenge you to do the same here in the comments section--or wherever you blog (leave a comment with a link).

1. Being able to wake up at an early hour without an alarm. For many years, I've been a night owl while my husband wakes up chipper each day. After a lot of practice and self enforced earlier bed-times, I'm able to wake up and spend a few moments over coffee with my husband before the day's concerns start to intrude.

2. Fresh fruit and vegetables. What a luxury to have strawberries and apples and bananas at my fingertips most every day. I keep a tray of fruit on the counter, often the basic apples and oranges, but their color brightens my day. And I know that my kids have healthy food at hand.

3. My silly dogs. I've learned much about love and trust from our two Italian Greyhounds. They make us laugh, too. During my chemo last summer, they sat by my side and kept me company. There were weeks when the only time I saw my husband's true smile was when the dogs greeted him at the door. They are so pleased to please.

There is always something to learn and always work to do.
Be blessed where you are, and bless others in return.

Tomorrow's Cleanup Information

2008-06-12T20:13:00.002-06:00

Continuing Volunteer Cleanup Efforts

Via email from the Sunset Zoo list Serve:

All volunteers wanting to assist with the continuing cleanup from the recent weather event should report to the northwest corner of the Bill Snyder Family Stadium parking lot (near the corner of Kimball and College Avenues) between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on Friday, June 13. Those volunteers should dress appropriately (long pants and shirts, work gloves if available) and will be transported to the affected areas.

In addition, all those with vehicles and equipment to use in support of the continuing cleanup effort should call 587-2489 or 587-2404 so they can be put in direct contact with those needing greater assistance. Any property owner or tenant needing this assistance from those volunteers with vehicles and equipment should call 587-2489 or 587-2404 to register for assistance.

I'm really impressed with the way the city of Manhattan has and is managing to get information out to the residents of Manhattan. My friend on the ground earlier today said that the Stadium parking lot was set up with a mobile command post. The stadium lot is about four blocks from the damaged area on campus- It is amazing to watch the community pull together to help each other.

KSU RELIEF FUND

2008-06-12T17:48:00.004-06:00

The Ksu Foundation's Web Page with information on how you can help. They also have a media presentation and links to other stories about the June 11th tornado.

I have yet to see a specific page for the RED CROSS here in town, but I'm sure they are accepting donations as well.

Please also remember the Flint Hills Breadbasket which helps feed people in need in the Riley County area.

****

The Manhattan Mercury has a SPECIAL REPORT with more photos and will update as news becomes available.

****

The tornado was classified as an EF4, the second most powerful classification.

***

Eyes on Campus

2008-06-12T12:27:00.007-06:00

1:40 pm.

Reports via cell phone from friend on campus:

Dennison Avenue is completely closed off and the area is being cleaned up as we speak. The building and grounds crews at KSU are hard at work putting tarps over the damaged buildings at KSU. Cardwell Hall has lost all the windows at the top and the ventilation system on the top of the building is shredded. You can see where the tornado touched down and pulled everything toward it. Many of the trees in the area have lost major branches, and there are branches strewed all over the ground.

The bottom level of Cardwell has already been boarded up. Danker Roofing has their crews on the grounds currently.

Burt Hall has many trees down, luckily the stone building has stood well in the face of the storm.

Waters Hall is missing windows and is roped off.

ECS seems to have escaped much damage (I spent much time there as a Grad Student.) although there is much debris. Chunks of the roof from the nuclear power plant are on the ground. The Engineering building has lost all the trees, many uprooted and knocked over.

***

Cars in the parking lot have been picked up and thrown. Hoods are torn off cars, and some are stacked on top of each other. (see photo in earlier post)

***

Campus is navigable thanks to the great response from the community and the KSU Grounds and Facilities Crew. Cleanup is progressing in an orderly manner. There are quite a few students walking around with their cellphone/cameras taking pics of the damage.

***

A special thank you goes out to Manhattan's first responders: the police, the firemen, and the EMS & Red Cross workers. They were out last night pulling people out of the torn houses. RCDP must be running on fumes as today has progressed.

***

As major news networks are now covering this story, I'm signing off for today. I am extremely grateful that Manhattan was blessed enough to have no lives lost. And grateful for the emergency system that warned local residents in a timely manner to take cover. I'm certain their work saved lives.

***

What is Left of the New Water's Hardware

2008-06-12T10:44:00.003-06:00

Just opened in October, here's what is left: (again, embedded from WIBW's viewer photos,photo credit to "Rob S.")

Hardware store destroyed

Local Photos/ KSU Tornado

2008-06-12T09:29:00.025-06:00

KSU RELIEF FUND The site has information about yesterday's events and a way for you to donate to KSU to help rebuild. This link is to the KSU Foundation.

****

Here is a link from WIBW with viewer photos. The website also has some early video. (The following photos are embedded from that site, photo credits to Justin Weibers for the KSU photos and "Steph" for the Amhearst photos) Click to see larger photos/or to comment at that site)

Amhearst:
Amherst Area, Manhattan Damage

Amherst Area, Manhattan Damage

Photos from the Campus Area:

K-State Tornado

K-State Tornado

K-State Tornado

Amherst Area, Manhattan Damage

Here is a link to the broadcast of last night's storm at it occurred on KTKA

Cnn's coverage is spotty right now. But the I-report section has a few other photos: see here

Toyota on Seth Child:

Extensive damge to Manhattan

*************
A photo of "a" Tornado during a lightning strike: EDIT: Good Grief-> awesome photo of the power of nature; NOT a photo from this tornado.

************

Another CNN "I-report" reporter has pictures available:

KSU: 20 million in damages

2008-06-12T09:05:00.003-06:00

According the interview I heard earlier on the radio, K-State has an insurance policy that will cover much of the damages. However, there is a 5 million dollar deductible --I'm sure that there will soon be a fund for donations. When I find out those details, I'll post them.

There are students enrolling today at K-State, many who were sleeping in the dorms last night--and there will still be enrollment today but the location has moved to Bramlage Coliseum.
I'm certainly impressed that KSU has been able to respond so quickly and still provide the necessary services to the incoming freshmen. There is a shelter for students, too. At Putnam Hall.

***

Be safe out there today.

***

Volunteers call the RED CROSS or the Manhattan City Managers (phone numbers below)

***

The Mercury. com says they'll have pictures soon. update at 11:55 am : The Mercury has several photos of the damage now.

***

Friends & such Report

2008-06-12T08:35:00.006-06:00

One of our friends in Amhearst reports that her entire neighborhood was out on the streets last night, talking in the street and making sure that everyone was safe. She says that the Amhearst Neighborhood is crazy with all the sirens and emergency vehicles.

***

Another friend near the Campus tells us that the roofs are torn off of buildings and that there are many cars damaged and much debris everywhere. I can hear the shock in his voice as spoke to me as he walked around the area.

***

Thank you to the friends who have called to check on us. Our home and neighborhood is safe; while some members of our church have damage to their homes.

***

Senator Pat Roberts said, "Kansas is not Katrina; Kansans will help Kansans" (via interview on FM 96.3 around 9:52 am.)

***

Outside my windows, it's a typical rainy morning.

***

Weather, too, is a Concern

2008-06-12T07:54:00.006-06:00

8:59 am

We are expecting more poor weather likely today. If you are out and working please be aware that the weather might be an issue again today.

The RCPD will be doing sweeps again today to make sure that everyone is accounted for. FEMA is in the area also doing sweeps, as is the RED CROSS. National Guard is on site to also secure the damaged areas.

****
9:01 am

If you need shelter, there is also now a shelter for pets available.

The RCPD will have a press conference this evening

Gov. Sebelius & our 2 senators Brownback and Roberts will be coming tonight to view the damage at KSU and Manhattan

*****

There are many great things about living in Kansas, tornadoes are not one of them. The community's response is amazing. Out of all the damaged homes, only 6 people needed to use the shelter last night.

***

K-Man, K-Rock still are running current updates.

***

Volunteers are Needed today after lunchtime. CALL City office at 587- 2489 or 587- 2404 for further instructions.

***

9:13 am

City Manager Ron Fear reports that they will be assessing structural damage and trying to mark any unsafe buildings in town. Most of the main roads are open in Manhattan. Please be aware that stoplights may be not functioning. Use caution when working outside as the situation is still dangerous--broken glass and nails and other building supplies and household items are spread over the area and still pose a hazard.

***

Picking Up

2008-06-12T07:41:00.003-06:00

Manhattan KS 8:50 am.

After the night's emergency, it's absolutely amazing that there have been no serious injuries reported here in Manhattan. The neighborhood was a family neighborhood. Another friend who lives in the area, is out of town--so we know that she is fine but have no word on her home.

Reports indicate that $20 millions in damage at Kansas State Campus.

Volunteers should call RCPD if you are physically fit and are willing to help pick up and sort debris in the tornado hit area especially in the Miller Ranch Area.

Water's True Value is destroyed to just a slab.

Damage to apartments and some home on College Ave.

Potteroff Hall is still available as a shelter.

Cash donations should be sent to the RED CROSS.

Two arrests made for looting in the Amhearst Area. Good Grief.

***

I'll update as the day progresses as The Manhattan Mercury site is down from heavy traffic.

***

Manhattan Damage/ KSU tornado

2008-06-12T01:13:00.007-06:00

About 30 houses in Miller Ranch area are destroyed to foundations, and the K-State Campus sounds like it has some serious damages as well: roofs torn off, power lines down, mostly near Weber Hall, and in the parking areas. Water damage, faculty offices damaged, and such. Reactor was hit by the storm, and the engineering building. But no real reports of injuries.

CAMPERS IN THE RESIDENTS HALL ARE SAFE, according to reports on the radio this morning.

It appears that all the storms are done for tonight. I think I will really go try to sleep.
Our quick review of our property didn't reveal any damages, but I'll look again with the light.

Amherst Area, Manhattan Damage

(If you've arrived directly to this page you may not see the latest information: I've embedded some photos--click photos from the archive links at the right of the page for the latest information I have from the area.)

June 11th Tornado

2008-06-12T00:32:00.006-06:00

It seems that the tornado "bounced" three times across town starting at the south west corner of town near Eureka Drive (just north of Fort Riley Blvd) skipped across the lake and hit the ridge at Miller Ranch just west of Seth-Child and continued across to damage several businesses. (I'm sickened to hear that there was some looting at the Toyota Dealership) then the tornado skipped over and hit near campus, removing a roof *near* the Farmhouse Fraternity House, and damaging several campus buildings.

PLEASE STAY HOME! Unless of course you you and your family need shelter. The RED Cross # is 537-2180 and they are operating a shelter at Cico Park's Potteroff Hall with a backup shelter ready to go if necessary. (Pets are NOT accepted)

I expect that WIBW will have photos for us in the morning and the Manhattan Mercury.(although there is NOTHING on their site right now, besides a thread in the comment section.) and here's a link to the Manhattan Broadcasting's website.

And a better map, indicating the Miller Ranch Area.

Tornadoes Tonight in Kansas

2008-06-11T22:48:00.017-06:00

June 11th, 2008 11:52 pm

Manhattan KS: Local radio reports a tornado touched down near Seth Childe Boulvd. within the last hour with cars turned over at /near the Toyota Dealership and on/near K-State's Campus.

We spent the hour huddled together in our storm shelter under the stairs. Luckily our friends who live in that area report power outages but are otherwise fine. We're under a watch until 3am.

We're staying near to cover until the worst blows over.

I'll update later in the morning.

Best,
Amy (wearing her red sandals just in case)

****
12:33am

Live update via b101. 5 fm Radio

Amhearst neighborhood (one block west of Seth Childe) with severe damage, roofs off houses on north Dartmouth, with Miller Ranch area reported as more severe via RCPD. Gas leaks are presumed for this area.

No current reports of injuries.

K-state Campus is also reporting damage.

***
Updated: 12:37

Water's True Value (the new location) is completely demolished. Some houses in Amhearst completely destroyed according to live broadcast on FM 101.5 Miller Ranch area heavily damaged.

*****
12:42 report from Campus:

University Heights has also been damaged as well as the Engineering Bldg on KSU campus

At Claflin & North Manhattan severe damage to campus soil labs (reported as uprooted/then dropped in parking lot).

*****
12:45

Lee Elementary School reports damage and debris. Summer School for Manhattan (USD 383) is canceled until further notice.

*****

12:50

minor injuries reported in Miller Ranch area such as broken bones. RCPD is going through the neighborhood right now.

*******

K-rock, K-Man, B104.7 will have links on their web-pages with further updates... Pets will NOT be allowed at the shelters (yet to be determined) I'll add links asap.

*****
On Campus: reports indicate

Cardwell, Bird, and another building damaged. Wind erosion lab is completely destroyed.

****

1:01 am

Eyewitness reports on the radio indicate about 10 houses completely destroyed to the foundation in the Miller Ranch area. Yet, most residents are accounted for with only minor injuries.
Red Cross is on the scene to take people to the shelter.

***

As of now, news reports probably 3 touchdowns in the Manhattan area. 1. Eureka Drive (west of Manhattan) 2.) Miller Ranch/ Seth Child/ Amhearst / and businesses 3.) K-State Campus (Now sealed from the public.)

***

Check with the above radio stations (and I'm sure that the video crews will have more for those who watch TV) for more update information as the night goes on.

***

I think I'll let the official people report from here. If you're here in Manhattan, please be safe and don't go gawking. The night's not quite over yet.

***

May God hold you in His hands

***

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Multiple Intelligences & Poetry

2008-06-04T18:58:00.005-06:00

I was digging around a bit today trying to find out more creative approaches for homeschooling my sixth grader and one of the suggestions was to pay attention to a child's "multiple intelligences" so that they have a greater chance of success (and also to make sure that the child is getting the support they need to balance out their "weaker" intelligences.)

Out of curiosity, I took one of the web's tests to identify my strengths, and the results were a bit surprising--I actually scored highest in Musical rather than Linguistic ability although the actual difference was rather small. It would be intriguing to find out if other poets (as a group) scored in a similar manner. (I also scored surprisingly high in Naturalist--but I attribute this to gardening and a grandmother who insisted I learn the names of the birds and trees around us.)

I'm not sure that the questions are terribly accurate-- and perhaps this would be a good tool to help an adult bring more "roundedness" to his or her life--knowing for instance that I am poor at spatial ability --might be a good prompt to work to develop this skill more fully in my life. (In case I decide to take up sewing or quilting in the future, this would come in handy.)

On the last trip to my local library, I found an interesting little book, Wisdom of the Plain Folk, on the Mennonites and Amish life --beautiful photography paired with hymns and sayings. I've been working my way through some theology recently, I began with Bonhoffer's Life Together, and now I've picked up The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis in a translation by William Griffin. The wily introduction is by Richard J. Foster and contains those little comments in Latin that used to annoy me, but now pique my interest.

Latin has been showing up everywhere--in my son's book on Shakespeare, for example--and of course in my older son's vocabulary course. I have often thought if I just looked at Latin long enough it would begin to make sense. I am thrilled to know that there is always another subject to try, another project to undertake, and more books, and books!

In garden news, the pot holding last year's stalks of basil has suddenly sprouted a few young plants, long after I'd ceased to hope. But two leaves become four, become eight and so forth.
The thought of fresh pesto tempts. And many years after I first made pesto at home and after quite a few years of frustrated searching, pine-nuts are easy enough to acquire at the local grocery. Perhaps this summer, I'll try making the pasta myself. Small as a marble: the season's first tomato, and like a small furry caterpillar the zucchini inch into the world.

Poetry as Punishment?

2008-06-02T19:51:00.003-06:00

Awhile back, some kids had a party and trashed the Frost House. Now, they've been assigned to take a class in Frost's poetry.
I suppose the impulse is good, but

Frost is one of those poets whose work seems "simple" at first glance, but with further thought, insight, and contemplation, the poems begin to open up facets of meanings--more than mere simple description, although that, too.

Try reading some for yourself. Here's a nice linked collection of some of Frost's work.
For Once, Then, Something

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Thanks to: Robert Frost page

This Too: Rock & Water

2008-05-24T22:24:00.007-06:00

Yesterday, as requested, a man and his two assistants created a new sidewalk for our house.

First a frame: the particular angles marked with lines and string, and wood. Then a base of crushed limestone leveled and waiting. The practical done with attention, too, is art.
As they worked, a robin landed between them to pull worms from the turned soil, heedless of her proximity to man, hopping closer, then closer again.

And his son, visiting, complained my boots are missing: four years old and eager to be there, in the frame, doing his Father's work, waiting eagerly for the rumble of the tumbler truck.

With the mud pouring in, with rubber boots and concrete rakes, the rush began to pull and press the raw ingredients into each section of the frame. A moment or two's pause as they waited for the right texture and consistency before smoothing each inch: the delicate business of pressing, cleaning each tool between passes, until the surface lay smooth, then brushing & cutting in narrow grooves to allow the give and take of the earth, and ice, and heat.

And the end of the day, he stood back and smiled, pleased.

Something solid, something reliable: a day's work, well done.

Poem

2008-05-16T21:45:00.001-06:00

Troupe Portrait with Unicycle.

by Amy D. Unsworth

One tent, one ring

and the ponies trudging their sad circles,

the bags of peanuts shrunken

to fit a child’s hand.

But the spangled girls still ascend

to the lofted ceiling,

to dangle by heel or tooth.

And to the father’s broad shoulders

the sons catapult.

And Daughter steps

from her high platform, like off the curb

in her everyday boredom.

From: Tar River Poetry, Spring 2007

Poetry as Witness

2008-05-15T08:34:00.007-06:00

I've discussed before "what poetry does" and one of the things is that poetry can act as witness. The best of these witness poems engage us at an emotional level vs. a didactic level and help us to understand the perspective of the person who is suffering and the reactions of those around him or her. Politically, a single person's expressed suffering tends to move us more than the "millions of people who have starved to death" type of data that is so often vaunted on the news.

Here is an interview, and another news source provides an article and poems from a poet from North Korea whose work tells of the suffering of the people. For the poet writing as Jang Jin Sung, writing is overtly a political act, so much that he must write under a pseudonym in exile after defecting from the North. He swam a river with the poems tucked in a chest/ or next to his chest. The language is unclear on that point in the article. Poetry as courage: strength to persevere, from the heart.

As the Months Go By

2008-05-10T21:47:00.005-06:00

On Thursday, at my ninth month checkup the doctor says: You're boring. This, my friends, is wonderful news. Apparently, my amazing bone marrow, countless people's prayers and good wishes, support from a wonderful spouse & family, and a positive outlook with lots of laughter are having the right desired effect. The cea (a cancer marker)-last time within normal ranges- was this time untraceable. My resting heart rate has improved dramatically, and more, and more. (I'll not bore with details) Thank you for your good thoughts.

On the way home,I was doing the snoopy dance in my head, and smiling. In looking briefly for the snoopy dance online I came across this quote:

"He has to retreat into his fanciful world in order to survive. "

But more interesting is the Gertrude Stein / Snoopy connection. . .
serendipities abound.

And once upon a time in a life time far away, I too knew Snoopy. In our school's production of "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown," I had the illustrious role of Woodstock. Yellow overalls, beanie hat and all.

Snoopy dances for everyone.

Poetry as Antidote

2008-05-04T21:51:00.006-06:00

Sometimes when you ask, the answer is partially comedy,
but wholly what one needs.

We, too, are wondrously made:

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,

Gallway Kinnell's St Francis and the Sow

The Universe has a sneaky sense of humor.
Remember to be well, laugh often, bless yourself.

$10 Words?

2008-05-04T05:53:00.005-06:00

The news some days is amusing. I've been an avid, voracious reader for a good percentage of my life, so I suppose that I take the words that comprise my vocabulary as standard English. "Thespian" and "flippant," according to the article above, qualify as "Ten Dollar" words. I'll give them credit for "sagacious" though, I haven't slipped that one in a conversation recently. And how do you get a job reading letters from prison?

I'll applaud the prisoner's efforts to give his son a large vocabulary and encourage the child to aim for college. Why should it be a surprise that he wants more for his child? Doesn't every parent? And maybe he just subscribes to The Word of the Day. It's those "big words" that teach root meanings which are so essential to understanding:

. . .an average American undergraduate is estimated to have a vocabulary of about 20,000 words. . . .One half of general words and two thirds of all academic, technical, and low-frequency words are derived from Latin, French (through Latin), or Greek, thus indicating the importance of learning the meanings of roots and affixes.
-- Valcourt and Wells

Language is so permeable and so apt to erosion that each generation really does have a "gap."Try reading books from 1950's and see how much the "normal" vocabulary has changed. Or pick up a copy of Shakespeare and see what a couple of hundred years will do. So, I'll applaud anyone who is working to keep "big words" in circulation. Don't the French have a whole administrative wing for that?

And if you learn more words, you'll experience a physical change in your brain:

For monolingual English speakers, increased vocabulary knowledge correlates with increased grey matter density in a region of the parietal cortex that is well-located to mediate an association between meaning and sound.
--Green, Crinion, Price

I like that "mediate an association between meaning and sound" line. It's an article on brain function, but there for a moment, I'm hearing a line from a conversation on poetry.

Did you see this?

2008-05-02T22:20:00.002-06:00

Congratulations to Seth who is continuing to making his mark on the poetry world. Now that's something!

Poetry's Featured Poet: Seth Abramson

Laugh or Cry?

2008-05-01T18:56:00.006-06:00

I'll admit that the whole site was quite funny in a strange way. But somehow knowing that these manipulated images (esp. of women) bombard us constantly makes me want to cry.

Isn't she beautiful enough before? I guess someone thought not.

Stop it.

but this one is just hilarious.

What He/She Said

2008-05-01T14:01:00.003-06:00

In a mailing from Poetry today, a card with a quote and a Triolet. It's a little late for the pocket poem, so I'll post it on the refrigerator. However, paper tends to get dusty and worn and splashed with tomato sauce, so here' the quote that I'm saying Amen to today:

Let us remember. . .that in the end we go to poetry
for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit
our lives and the world in which we live them, and
that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might
be less apt to destroy both.

-Christian Wiman

In this week's library catch: Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.

-Jane Hirshfield

And that's the opening sentence for the preface. Thus far, I've really enjoyed the essays I've sampled. In the library's deep chair under a corner window, I found myself nodding emphatically. I am reminded of this Louise May Alcott quote as well:

She is too fond of books and it has addled her brain.

And if you have a moment to giggle, you can check out an ornament decorated with this quote and the "related items" at Signals.

A Cloud for Spring

2008-05-01T12:42:00.003-06:00

It's been a long while since I've posted a word cloud. There is a cloud generator here if you'd like to try it for yourself: TagCrowd.
You can enter your webpage, or a piece of writing and even exclude words (like blog).
Since the webpage, I entered was this one, I'm sure that these are my common words for the last month or so. Can you tell I've been in the garden?

created at TagCrowd.com

Morning & Evening Sun

2008-04-29T19:39:00.004-06:00

The birds begin early their warning, warming songs. A pair of robins supervise as I water the tomatoes and peppers, and sprinkle the morning's coffee grounds on the compost. The nest is still hidden, or is yet to be built. I cannot remember when the cedar sprouts twigs and strings and the mouths of baby birds. Now and then, a grub in the soil: fat and soft and luminescent in the light. A curl of possibility, a mouthful for the featherlings, a brown June beetle, wrapped in April's cloak.

***

Spring is creeping in, the burn-downs are mostly finished, the green sprouts across the prairie, the rocks are small islands, anchorings in the green and black bottomed seas. Woody stalks rise, masts from sunken ships, no leaves to catch in the evening breeze. We come home smudged with soot, the windows rolled down, music and laughter pouring out into the dusk.

Abundance

2008-04-25T14:58:00.004-06:00

Today, a gift. Three small bags stuffed with handfuls of sedum. And another filled with several clumps of daylilies. An afternoon spent up and down on the rocky slope, planting. Tucking in green among the stones. The balance and give of the body, the muscles' stretch and contraction. Being able to dig and plant, to work.

To remember for a moment and then, forget again, illness, constraint, inability. To pick up where one once left off, to see what has gone on growing without tending: the blooms of the periwinkle on a grey cloud day with new sprouts reaching and rooting, new clumps of lemon balm, and the tightly curled leaves of the hostas rising through the dead leaves' litter.

Comforted by Home

2008-04-23T15:57:00.010-06:00

One of my favorite authors is Willa Cather. She loved to write about place and the idea of home. I've recently finished her Shadows on the Rock which is a snapshot of a young girl's life during the late 1600's in Quebec. Her attention to place is amazing as always. I feel as if I'd like to visit Quebec to see if anything of the world she describes still exists:

Directly under his feet was the French stronghold,--scattered spires and slated roofs flashing in the rich autumnal sunlight . . . Divest your mind of Oriental colour, and you saw here very much such a mountain rock, cunningly built over with churches, convents, fortifications, gardens, following the natural irregularities of the headland on which they stood; some high, some low, some thrust up on a spur, some nestling in a hollow, some sprawling unevenly along a declivity. (4-5)

The detail in which she describes the Apothecary's home, is rich in such detail as well. There is a love of sensual detail, a way of evoking even the smallest item to demonstrate that the house is more than mere lodging but a home-place which echoes the traveler's original home in the heart of France. Even in the wildness of the primitive settlement of Quebec, with the right reminders of a more gentle life, home is created.

Shadows is a tale of diaspora, the Father always longing for the home left behind; the daughter looking forward to a life created in the land where she's grown into a woman. Hope and despair are the two faces of the coin; the old and the new, where we've been and where we are . In Willa Cather's novel, the best of the old life completes the new through patterns of actions, through simple household objects, "all the little shades of feeling which make the common fine," "le persil" on the windowsill, the rug on the floor, tradition: what we cannot help but carry with us.

****

See also:
Willa Cather Archive at University of Nebraska-Lincoln

****

Hands in the Dirt

2008-04-23T12:24:00.006-06:00

Off to the nursery twice this week, once to replace the lavender plants and add pale purple bacoba to the mix by the driveway. Once for veggies and marigolds plus strawberries and red nasturtiums, an unexpected selection by my 11 year old son.

I am Mini Muscle-Man, he said, as he attempted to carry the 50lbs of potting mix from the store. He wants to paint pots, or add stickers, and next, grow pumpkins. Moving, halfway through the summer, there would be heartache of leaving behind the promise of such autumn pleasure. I convince him to choose zucchinis with a harvest date well within our stay: stir-fry, zucchini bread, zucchini casserole with tomatoes and cheese, and a special trip in October to pick pumpkins from a farm field. This is fine work, compromise, to find accord, to trade one dream for another, to promise together to be happy with the choices made.

Early in the year, we spread the compost on the bed for my small garden. As we turned it again yesterday, the dirt was dark and crumbly with much worm-sign. Room for roots to spread, however short the season. Tucked into the damp soil, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini planted to feed us, and festive orange and red marigolds to repel unwanted invaders. No matter how small, a garden is a commitment to water, to weed, to taking better care of ourselves and our earth. What grows here? Hope.

Last Frost Date

2008-04-21T07:28:00.004-06:00

.

There and Back:

According to the plant nurseries, this weekend was the last expected chance of frost for Kansas. The flowers, in small pots and 6-packs, smiled beside the roadways. Grocery stores, hardware stores, and random gravel lots all sported spring's glad colors. Spicy marigolds, pale petunias, leggy vinca, and the promise of many backyard gardens' bounty: peppers, tomatoes, summer squash.

Also along the roadside, winter's damage to the trees: broken crowns, downed limbs, and log piles. Evidence of saws and sledges and splitting wedges, even as some plant in anticipation, others remember and prepare for the wind, cold, and ice that seemed ever present for many long months.

Home Again:

Raking back the leaves reveals lemon balm along the slope and new plants in profusion. Where little else deigns to grow, the lemon balm spreads fragrant leaves. Even though I live well within the city limits, a small grove of trees graces my life. The birds are chipper this morning; a mockingbird sang his serenade this morning through my bathroom window. I am grateful for open windows in the morning, for small green leaves, for another day of to be alive.

Small Pleasures

2008-04-12T21:28:00.004-06:00

clean sheets, warm blankets, cozy Italian greyhounds, and the sounds of my husband rustling about in the kitchen
the tempting smell of morning coffee and the feel of a perfect pot-bellied mug's warmth against my palms
watching Pride & Prejudice with a friend: five hours of dancing, costumes, and fine horseflesh
the particular way that lemon and poppyseed drop-cookies form tidy circles in the heat of the oven
the lovely contrast of pale yellow of the dough with blue-grey poppy seeds
the process of cutting circles of parchment paper with pinking sheers to layer in a tin with the freshly baked cookies.
the promise of home-made cookies for an after school snack later this week.
the windowsill parsley pressing its leaves against the sun-lit glass as against a lover
the click of mahjong tiles on the kitchen table and my teen-aged sons' patter
a steaming bowl of mushroom soup
evening sun on my face as I wash up after dinner
piling onto the bed with my youngest son and two dogs to watch a movie all cuddled up.
the tactile pleasure of reading a library book in an edition published in 1950 with soft, rounded, edges of the worn paper (and enjoying the book, too)
monolith (what a word!)

May you, too, be so blessed.

Draft: Insistent, The Rain

2008-04-08T07:49:00.011-06:00

Insistent, the Rain.

Now: a time for rain, for roots.

The cedars lose their powdery-greyness

for green,

a process

imperceptible

from day to day.

Until comes a morning

and the jay and wren, framed in

wet window-panes,

perch in fluffed garments

on bright,
drenched and dripping,
limbs.

Anticipation

2008-04-01T22:19:00.002-06:00

Spring is due any second now, the daffodils are in-bud, but waiting for more sunlight before they trumpet the news. Yesterday, our first "earthworm morning" with the spring rain and thaw flooding the tunnels and sending dozens wriggling for the surface with the certain particular smell that the combination of earthworms and wet earth exude. And tiny little leaves settle on the spirea , the salvia has turned green again, another month to see if the fall's project of splitting & transplanting the lavender yields an abundance of spikes for the bees, or another trip to the greenhouse.

It is time too, to say goodbye to these small rituals. I didn't think to mark the last fire in the fireplace, the last snow, the last snowman in this front yard. We are due to pack boxes and dismantle this life for the next: the next post, the next borrowed house, the even more temporary quarters of a school assignment. And then another: undetermined, undefined. The worlds begin to touch and intrude one upon the other, the world of possibility, of change, of adventure. But reaching out, the comfort of this home slips away into the past. I am looking for grace. I am always learning who I am, who I might be.

I turn the soil, rake out the fallen leaves, add another day's grinds to the compost pile. I think of tomatoes and gourds, and perhaps a pumpkin vine for the enriched soil. And wonder if the robins will return even though their nesting tree was broken in this year's storm. The red-bellied tomatoes will be a gift, to whoever comes after us. And I have half a summer to watch for their yellow trumpets' heralding.

Pocket a Parsley Poem

2008-03-16T20:01:00.003-06:00

The Academy (poets.org) wants everyone to carry around a poem in their pocket to celebrate April and Poetry and such. I don't know what to carry this year. I carry a few in my heart by Auden, by Lux, by Kenyon, by Hirshfield, and more, and more.

This year, I'm thinking about carrying one of Billy Collin's poems. He has a great take off of the Three Blind Mice nursery rhyme. I think non-poetry inclined people might enjoy it (maybe even more that avowed poetry people:

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of "Three Blind Mice."

(Thanks to another blogger. . .)

Now this one is fun, yet touching in its own odd way. I enjoy the long "Chinese" style of the title, the playfulness of the theme, the empathy, the "jazz riff" style of the poem and the good sensual detail. I think it's also fun, because the poem asks all the questions I wanted to ask as a kid. (Nursery Rhymes don't always make much sense and it's rather reassuring to think that someone else notices these oddities too.)

In the sixth grade class where I teach both reading & writing poetry once a week, this has been a nice introduction to poetry. At the beginning of the year, I open with this one. The kids like playing with nursery rhymes, since it gives them something to write down and musses up the blankness of the page: a start. And that's a great thing, somewhere to start thinking about language as not just as story but as a way of playing. Play leads to love of words, love of words leads to adeptness of language, and taken together with a nudge in the right direction the two will lead to poetry.

I'll not lie though, I'm always pleased to find someone who will talk difficult with me, who will get down to the very words, and wrestle with the poem's ideas (meaning and significance), and find 13 ways of looking. And discuss theory, or theology, or etymology, or contexts, and literary allusions; and how these influence our interpretation of the poem. Oh, but how few and far between those exchanges are. But I look for those conversations, and I think about poetry even if I must read alone, all by myself.

What will you poem will you put in your pocket? April is sneaking up, while March tries to decide: lion or lamb. And the daffodils push up through the mulch, tempting us to forget snow, and ice, and cold for another year.

Truth & Everything After

2008-03-14T08:25:00.005-06:00

I follow the conversations at Critical Mass with interest and sometimes just to visit the fox. But today's conversation about truth and memoir raised valid points. Is it all that important that a memoir be 100% truthfully relayed? Of course, the answer is that it can't be ALL that important since it is impossible for memory to stay true. We embellish, we embroider, we edit, without often realizing it. What we do remember as true might be contradicted by someone who was there in the memory with us. One of the things that fills me with dread is when someone close to me asks "Remember when we. . ." because what they ask about is some that is typically important to them and often I don't remember at first.

Asked about my childhood, I can recall the pony that my grandfather pastured near our home. I can remember the feel of the curry comb in my hand, of picking burrs from his (or was it her?) mane. Or have I substituted the tactile experiences of other, less memorable horses? I know that one day the pony bloated while I was putting on the saddle, and as we trotted through the woods and jumped over a downed log, the saddle tipped sideways and I fell off into the leaf mold near the place where my sister and I laid out sticks to form rooms in our pretend house under the hickories and white oaks, where we used acorn cups and pieces of bark to lay the table. Near the pond where one spring the fish were so hungry that I used mushroom caps to catch them on my cane pole because I ran out of earthworms. And wild roses, and blackberries, and persimmons in the fall. Some things are etched deeply. Some things fall and blow away beyond recall.

Thank you Blog!

2008-03-09T20:48:00.003-06:00

for giving me a space to speak about literature and poetry. And remember the blessings of everyday life. And more especially for giving back to me friends that I thought were lost.

***

The dogs went wild with joy when our two older sons returned from their weekend ski trip.
I am happy too, that they survived the slopes with minimum physical consequences.

When they came back I noticed: the older has had a growth spurt & is starting to look down on me. The other's shoulders are wider, the fuzz on his chin coarser. Yet they still laugh.
This is not what I expected teen years to be like. Oh, and I am grateful. Every moment.

Draft: Words Together Dreaming

2008-03-06T10:31:00.006-07:00

Words Together Dreaming

(draft by Amy D. Unsworth)

Jacinte: French back

To Greek & Hyacinthus—

too pleasing, too adored

by the gods—Jealousy incites

murder, blood to bloom:

An iris, a Hyacinth.

Racinate: de-racinate through French

back to Latin. Sans “de”—

uprooted turns to rooting.

Blood seeps through soil

reaching for Lethe—oblivion—

yet forced back to light

each spring the bursting forth

and swift decay— ardor a mere season—

and eternity the long hours of desolation

in the concealed bud hidden above Hades

rooting, rooted, and remembering.

________________________________

Prairie Dreams

2008-03-04T08:48:00.003-07:00

Right after we read Giants in the Earth, National Geographic did a feature article on the prairies of North Dakota: The Emptied Prairie. The article shows just one facet of North Dakota, I'm sure. The idea, however, that the prairie will not abide company seems to echo Beret's despair and anxiety about living in the vast emptiness. Yet, the emptiness now is merely a façade.

The number of acres that remain prairie grassland continues to diminish. The problem of grassland loss is enormously complicated and tied into the need for better sources of energy. Wind energy and ethanol production are claiming some of these lands. I'm unsure exactly how wind turbines cause damage to the prairie ecosystem, but people who work with the Tallgrass Prairie in Kansas feel strongly about it. The Conservation Reserve Program, a program developed to help with wildlife conservation, is seeing losses in the amounts of acreage that was formerly left fallow as wildlife habitat(12% of the CRP in North Dakota lost year according to the wildfowl conservation group Ducks Unlimited.) There is some indication that grasslands may act as carbon-dioxide sinks (here), but we're still learning how to manage this. And here in the Flint Hills, human expansion has covered the prairie that I once could see from my own windows.

Empty places are essential to human experience, too. Especially here in the middle of the continent. The ocean's vastness is beyond daily avenues of travel, there are no mountains to remind us that we are small. The prairie's scale and the prairie's unconcern demonstrate how insignificant our human conceits, yet paradoxically, remind us how much harm mankind can do with our own greed, ignorance, and willful defiance of natural order.

Winter: The Recidivist

2008-03-02T20:43:00.012-07:00

First, acknowledge that it is--technically-- still Winter's domain.
Second, be grateful that the seedlings sprout in the windowsill.
Third, accept that precipitation blesses farms and ranches.
Fourth, realize that water tables rise when snow & ice falls.
Fifth, recognize one's fortune in warm shelter and supplies.
Sixth, examine hail and snowflakes in their transience.
Seventh, stir soup, knead bread and serve to rosy-nosed children.

Even under snow, the minute urge towards green.
Robins in great flocks rest in the bare limbed trees.
A pelican floats on the river. A heron rises.
A pair of bluebirds dally around a nesting box.
And overhead the geese, in mixed flights
of Canadas and Snows, wing with the wind
now Northwards. Patience.

In the crown of a splintered cottonwood
a pair of young hawks, bane to the field mice,
balances between the seasons.

The Old Dream

2008-02-27T20:18:00.008-07:00

Over the course of the last year, I've read a handful of books written 1850-1900's. It makes me wonder where that America has gone? Yes, life was (is) often brutish and cruel, but what a sense of optimism, too. Giants in the Earth does an excellent joy of contrasting the hope and excitement of the pioneer with the drudgery and loneliness. (And the lovely personification of the earth, nature, storms as trolls/giants is notable) The contrast plays out in a single household between husband and wife. I'm much more familiar with the prairie stories of Willa Cather, the glorious golden future laid out in neat rows of wheat; the prairie soil turned by the plow and the contented grazing of cattle. And I've often wondered about the women's perspective on the prairie life: lonely, dirty, exhausting. But I understand the other perspective too: freedom, the pleasure of making the earth bear sustenance, of watching things grow, the satisfaction of the work of one's hands. Do you know about the locust plagues?

The thyme sprouts green on the windowsill. And the zinnia seedlings keep turning towards the afternoon sunlight flooding into the house. On days like this, I can imagine spring. The prairie is brown again, but anticipating. Soon the burndowns will begin and the flames will march across the prairie, sometimes so tall that you could imagine them as the Giants walking, devouring the leavings of hope and fear, until there is nothing but the everlasting rocks, and the fertile soil: a challenge to try once again to make a life sprout. A re-blackened slate.

A Heart at Half Mast

2008-02-15T20:07:00.007-07:00

During the last few weeks, I've spent a lot of time in thought grappling with the ideas of need.
The news everyday is depressing, homes lost to foreclosure, more people losing their grip and taking their lives and the lives of others, more poverty, more hunger, more environmental problems. My God, what are we doing to each other? And to this world we must live in?

I used to think that poetry *shouldn't* be political; it to quite a long time to realize how even that stance is (in fact) a political one, albeit, choosing to live with blinders in the lala land of art, rather than to take a good look around and to accept responsibility for my part, my actions, or more accurately: my lack of action. I dance with this issue, I really do: is it right for me to be sitting at my computer writing when there is always work that needs to be done? There are people that need food, not just a poem, even though I still want to hope that poems can make a difference:

***
Envelop
by Amy Unsworth

Given time and distance, both between us,
how can I give what I should give:
bread, warm from the oven, crisp crust,
butter dripping with each bite? Tea and honey,
lemon for tartness, to temper the little sorrows,
the sweet to soothe, for the warmth against our palms,
the leaves swirled in the patterned cups predicting
a tomorrow we could live with and through.
But here, an envelope, lined paper, inked with words
that perhaps you can read as hope, perhaps one
as strength, and one--with time--as joy.

***

Long ago, I imagined poetry as a way of making human connection. And I think that the lack human connection is the essential problem still, and I believe that art has its place and role in making life worth living. And beauty too, essential.

But people are dying of loneliness, from lack of hope, from the lack of a neighbor who even checks to see if they are ok. (a news story a few weeks ago: a toddler starved to death in his own apartment, because his mother died and NO ONE knew, or worried about them, or cared enough to check on them.)

Because we look away, when we don't like what we see, when it makes us UN-comfortable, when it makes us feel selfish, because we don't want to feel bad. (They are eating dirt mixed with lard in the Haitian slums.)

Too bad for them, we say. Bad choices on their part, we say. They should have thought about that before they (fill in the blank) (had a baby, rented that bigger house, bought a car). It makes it easier for us to look the other way. (RJ touched on this over at Scoplaw recently)
But, it's really: There, but for the grace of God, go I.

A friend sent me to check out a web site (wishuponahero.com). People ask for socks for their kids. For help this month with this and that. But the reoccurring note that continues to surprise me: it's not the stuff (money, sock monkey, diapers) that makes the biggest difference: it is knowing that someone *out there* gives a damn.

At half-mast,
Amy

***
quote from today's mail:

Action springs not from a thought,
but from a readiness for responsibility.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Me-Me : Visual DNA

2008-01-31T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://friends.imagini.net/@2096328-c867/profile/9

I can't get that code to work.

argh.

but there's the link.

I hope you have better luck

Poems: Understanding Gravity

2008-01-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Understanding Gravity
By Amy Unsworth

for S.

You sleep surrounded by our sons.
I keep watch, listen to the night’s wind,
to the dog’s complaint
as coyotes scavenge, padding
through streets and meager grass.

When the sun rises
you’ll be in the wide arms
of the sky. The boys will eat
their breakfast of oranges
and strawberries, juice
dripping from their chins.

You will step from the body
of the plane and wait
for the wrench,
for silk to catch wind,
the earth rushing its claim.

***

Honorable Mention, Desert Moon Review Poetry Month Contest, 2002,
Editor's Issue, Poems Niederngasse

Enter the Drawing for: Primitive Soap Prize

2008-01-19T17:34:00.001-07:00

The year's first winner of "The Primitive Soap Prize" from Small Branches Studio is Mr. Dick Jones of Patteran Pages !

Mr. Jones, if you would, please send me an email so we can arrange shipping for your prize!

***

Enter the next Primitive Soap Prize Drawing:
Please leave a comment with your email address on the blog
Or send an email to let me know you'd like to enter
between Jan 19-Feb 2, noon central time.

( for this contest, I will only accept entries from the US, due to shipping constraints.
Future contests may be open internationally, but I have to research the shipping first)
~ stay tuned for more!~

***

Update 2 May
If you'd like to order some soap, please send me an email & I'll let you know what I currently have available. Some weeks I'm working on primitives, others I garden, and much of the time I'm writing poetry. But I often have soap ready to go in Bear's Best (Oatmeal & Honey-Almond) and Far Horizons (Orange & Almond).

Small Poem: Western Wind

2008-01-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

Western Wind
(anonymous)

Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ! If my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!

***

Anonymous.

***

Poetry cross pollinates music.

Listen to the Agnus Dei section here. (midi file) See an example of Agnus Dei

Now see here: John Taverner.

Thanks to this guide for the directional marker!

***

Blogs & Charles Dickens

2008-01-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

As regular visitors might notice (Hi Glenn!) I've recently updated the blog's look and added the tags. This update made me aware of the blog's serialization of my life. And I noticed that I am always reading other people's blogs as mini-autobiographies or fictions. I follow several blogs quite regularly and it is interesting to watch the "lives" unfold there. (However "mediated" these may be, some strive for more fictionalization than others.) Which reminds me of Charles Dickens and raises questions about the writing life. So, a theory to discuss.

Dickens wrote a great deal of quality work. Is it possible that the actual process of serialization helps a writer develop? I can think of these benefits (even if Dickens didn't do these):

You have to show up to write, but you don't have to write it all today.
You have to have something exciting/important/gripping happen in regular intervals to keep the reader's attention so they'll buy the next version, but doesn't this help maintain interest in the long (novel) form too?
The possibility of feedback? If you have a bad episode, the readers might complain! But you have a chance to fix it before the printers set the type for the long version!
Offers a chance to let the characters develop as they will, instead of having to map out an entire book at once. (I don't know enough about Dickens to know if he did write this way, but it seems like it might be a positive thing. Any Dickens scholars out there?)
The possibility to use/exploit current events in your story line. ( the news in poetry?)

I feel as if the blog helps me formulate ideas that I might otherwise let slip into oblivion. It helps me keep a record of what I'm doing and thinking about for future reference. It helps to have a real readership to think of, rather than some abstract vague audience. I realize that having a reader to think of makes be be more accurate when I write and try to fill in specifics and details. When I go back and read old entries, I am amazed at how much detail I don't recall of those moments. I'm greedy, I don't want to lose a single thought.

I came across a Latin quote that seems to sum the idea up nicely: Sic transit gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of the world). I don't know the source or context of this quote yet (a grave inscription?), so allow me to put it in a context for myself for today: There is glory (truth, beauty, things to be grateful for, love, learning, pleasure) in each of the moments passing through our lives. It is there, in the quotidian, waiting for us to acknowledge it.

Someone was looking for Ents!

2008-01-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

I am always interested in why people I don't know might be visiting. Someone was searching for Ent Poems, so I thought I'd add mine to the blog. The poem was originally published in The Minas Tirith Evening Star which is the publication for the American Tolkien Society (.org).

Lament for an Entish Wife
after Tolkien

By Amy Unsworth

Evergreen, my love, among the pins and cones I wait for you
watching through driving rain, sleet, and branches choked with ice.
Winter piles her drifts between us, the meadow a perfect
glittering sign: no footprints, no homecoming for Solstice night.

My tender shoot, autumn pains me. Every creature stirs
against the rising cold and the sap grows thick at the heart of the trees.
The gold-shot woods wear the colors of your hair and eyes,
every burning tree, a glimpse of you, swirling in brocades.

In summer, I walk through orchards tended by graceless men,
I graft branches from yellow pippins to those of crimson.
Each year the fruit grows ere sweeter, the skins stippled, a gift.
In harsh tongues, men speak of Elves, even while resting in my shade.

Come then, to the edge of the wood at Spring, see the young deer
leap up at my rustling. Here, in the thin sunlight, on the wetdark
branches of the redbud, on the tremulous arms of the dogwoods:
a signpost—the blossoms bearing the tally of all our days apart.

**************

(I'll add the rest of the publication information here-I have to go look it up.)

and remember to enter the drawing. Right now there is One entry & your odds are good!

More Lather! (and a Drawing!)

2008-01-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

And this week's primitive soap flavor is Sweet Orange and Almond: It is made with all-natural ingredients with essential oils for a light & clean scent!

If you leave a comment (with an email address) between now & next Saturday (noon central time) on my blog, I'll enter you into a drawing for some sample size soaps & what not!

'round here (more or less)

2008-01-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

I don't even know how (or what I was looking for!) but I came across a photography blog with very interesting/intriguing photographs, many of them from 'round Kansas. I think I learned more about Kansas while visiting this site than I had in the several years I've lived here.

The section on Chapman, Kansas was very interesting and the photographs of last month's ice-storm show a full view of what happened with the trees & wires through that very long week here in the middle of it all.

The architectural features & the period signs are especially interesting. I've been to Junction City (one town to my west) more than I can count. But I'd never the signs until The Lope pointed them out.

Post-Colonial Life

2008-01-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

I've been reading some critical essays on life in the post-colonial world. There have been some difficult questions raised about both political and personal identity; and if these are necessarily connected to the patch of ground/nation/region to which a person belongs. The other question is if these "roots" are severed what is the impact on the personal identity? Is it beneficial to retain the cultural roots of a home that you no longer occupy?

One of the critic-poets argues that yes, you can remain true to "your roots" and still make changes. But the solution offered is very difficult; it basically calls for people to not allow themselves to be pulled into the conflict. A "leave the past behind" attitude. While you don't have to forget the people who died, you shouldn't fight on in their name.

This sounds good in theory, doesn't it? But, can it really apply to places like Rwanda? (or Ireland, or practically anywhere that there has been conflict between cultures, which is exactly the entire globe.) Basically, the critic would be telling the people who suffered the most: ok, just move on. (of course, this is a gross simplification) I'm not sure practically how that would work on a grand scale. On a small scale, it's possible. It is possible on an individual level to forgive and move on. But on a large scale? I don't have faith that this would work.

Another argues that the trying to cling to these "pasts" is damaging, especially for the second generation who might end up lost in the limbo between two cultures and often two languages.
Another claims that living "without roots" is, in fact, a self-imposed silence. That's dangerous too, right?

The most popular option for navigating this seems to be "hybridity," which seems great if you're from the dominant culture: I'll appreciate some of your culture and you can appreciate some of mine. But how long will it before the other culture is so watered down that it disappears?

Even though I've lived in the same country my entire life, I still think about these ideas as applicable to my own life. I like the thought of being connected to a history, a heritage. But, I haven't inherited many traditions from my family's country of origin. Our family has been here too many generations and by my parent's time they are all gone. Occasionally, one of my folks will mention their grandparents doing this or that, baking a particular treat, eating a certain food. But all the tradition (how & why) of these has been lost to time. And we move, a lot. Probably more than the "average American," although it seems our culture is getting more adept with the moving boxes every year.

And of course, the post-colonial theory is very applicable to the US today. I've lived across the country where there are some traditions left; and we've known many people from a myriad of cultural backgrounds. (One of our family's favorite meals is a Japanese type of curry that a friend from Hawaii shared with us. Another is a particular (regional) way of making pinto beans that is so much better than any other Mexican-style I'd had, taught to me by a friend from Mexico.) I try to make some 1st generation traditions for my boys, too. (Chinese food on Halloween, anyone?) (Yes, most of these traditions *are* involving food here, because they're the quickest to describe & relate to. [I guess I get a little frustrated too with how many of our American traditions are dictated to us by the corporate world through super-saturation in advertising. Chex Mix, anyone? But that's probably a topic better left for another day.])

Perhaps an effective thing to do, instead of demanding that people mold themselves to one American ideal is just to live and let be. But can this work politically, as well? Doesn't it still lead people to an us vs. them mindset? What does America want? appears to be the question on all the politicians' tongues. What America are they talking about? There must be a million versions of America and each of them wants something different. Good luck answering that question.

So, I'm left to consider how to go about living the best I can in this complicated world and hoping that we each can individually discover a way to go about living peacefully and interacting one with another.

Happy ( Belated) Birthday Blog!

2008-01-04T23:08:00.000-07:00

Three years have zipped right by & I still love the view from here.
I'm always grateful to have you, my friends, dropping by to visit.
Thanks for being a part of it all!

Lather Up!

2008-01-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

Bear's Best Blend
Hand-Milled Goat's Milk Soap

Ok, not really poetry, but it's what's been informing my days.
(but I did sneak some alliteration in there. . .)

Cheers!

Literature & Lather

2008-01-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've just finished unmolding a batch of handmade (my hands) honey-almond-oat soap. I'm trying to keep my hands busy recently as well as my head. I've recently made candles, too. I love the tactile experience of working with wax & soap. But I think it's the connectedness to the past of gardening, making bread, candles, and soap that makes me enjoy these tasks so much. I find more and more that I appreciate tradition and carrying on traditional skills. My boys help some days too-and I find pleasure in watching them learn, too.

Not that my brain hasn't been busy; I've been writing poems, and doing some editing work. I think I've been "under-pressured" for the last year with what I was requiring of myself. I do acknowledge that time out was necessary and the distance from the most difficult parts of my treatment means that I am now able to "recollect in [something closer to] tranquility." I think I'm going to end up with a collection of these poems as well, but I'll honestly say that I'll be happy when they're written and the covers closed. It's a chapter of my life that I hope remains in the past tense.