Live happily ever after

Last chance! I'm giving away two great books, and will draw names and announce winners on Monday, January 16, 2012. Win one of these books and you'll write poems, make money and live happily ever after. *

How to Make A Living As A Poet
- by Gary Glazner

 

 

 

 

 

101 Ways to Make Poems Sell: A Guide to Getting and Staying Published
- by Chris Hamilton-Emery

 

 

 

 

Winning is simple. Just leave your name in the comment section below. If you like, tell me the book that gets you inspired to write. On Monday, January 16, 2012, I'll choose two names in a random drawing. You could be a winner. It's that easy!

Feeling shy? Zip me a private email — dcm@drewmyron.com — that says I want to win. 

* Results strongly encouraged but not guaranteed.


Thankful Thursday: A Note

I am thankful for this thank you note.

And for gratitude expressed with pen and paper.

How simple, how profound. How easy it is to make me smile.

 

It's Thankful Thursday! Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places & things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today?


The Year Ahead in Books

One year closes, another opens, and the reading list expands. Today, in the conclusion of the Great Books Lists, I'm looking ahead.

8 Books I Am Eager to Read in 2012

Or: Of the zillion books to read, these are at the top of my list.

These books are not necessarily newly published, but new discoveries to me. 

NON-FICTION

Steal Like an Artist
by Austin Kleon

Best known for his Newspaper Blackout Poems — poetry made by redacting words from newspaper articles with a permanent marker — artist/writer Austin Kleon is back with a book of ideas and illustrations to guide a creative life.

Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America
by Helen Thorpe

A book that explores "how achingly complex the whole question of who we punish for entering the country illegally really is," wrote O magazine. "Yadira, Marisela, Clara, and Elissa, are the offspring of Mexican parents living in Colorado at or below the poverty line. All four finish high school with distinction and go on to college. But there's a profound dividing line: Clara and Elissa have papers; Yadira and Marisela are illegal. As the years go by, the consequences of being undocumented multiply: no getting on a plane ever, no driver's license, no financial aid, no good way to convert that degree into a profession. Without a nation, practically speaking, to return to, these are the limbo children." 

FICTION

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
by Maile Meloy

The New York Times listed this short story collection in its Ten Best Books of 2009. "Meloy’s concise yet fine-grained narratives, whether set in Montana, an East Coast boarding school or a 1970s nuclear power plant, shout out with quiet restraint and calm precision." 

 

Blueprints for Building Better Girls: Stories
by Elissa Schappell

"The eight stories here concern women operating under a post-1960s, post-Friedan, “you can have it all” ethos passed from mother to daughter to sister," explains the New York Times Book Review. "Schappell’s book crackles with the blunt, cynical humor wielded by people chronically on the defensive. Her women are caustic and witty, even in the face of sorrow." 

All the Dancing Birds
by Auburn McCanta

This fictionalized account of a woman living with Alzheimer's, is not yet published — and it needs to be! Auburn McCanta's first full-length novel has earned accolades and awards from the National Writers Association and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association but does not yet have a publisher. I have fingers crossed that 2012 is the year this moving, important book sees print.

POETRY

Fuel
by Naomi Shihab Nye

I may never catch up in reading the work of my favorite poet. There's just so much. Fuel, published in 1998, is one of Nye's most acclaimed volumes and is just one of  21 poetry books. She's also written essays, a young adult novel, chapbooks, and songs. 

 

The Book of Lamenting
by Lory Bedikian

Combine a great title, with a great poetry press, and you've got an addition to my reading list. I'm eager to read work that poet Yusef Komunyakaa says, "brims with darkness and light . . . the emotional landscape here is rounded and shaped through an imaginative exactness and sobriety."

Facts About the Moon
(also: The Book of Men)
by Dorianne Laux

I'm a bit late to the party, so I'll start with Laux's latest work — her fourth and fifth volumes of poetry. "Laux writes gritty, tough, lyrical poems that depict the actual nature of life in the West today," says Philip Levine, U.S. Poet Laureate.

 

What's on your list? There's always room for more. 

Want to share more favorites? Let's talk books. Join me on Goodreads.

 

Thankful Thursday: Coffee & Conversation

Shirley and Drew at The Village Bean in Yachats, Oregon.

So much of my time is spent alone — writing, revising, reflecting. On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for writers -- near and far, in person and in email -- who become friends, who shake me from myself, who make room in their worlds for (yet) another writer.

It's Thankful Thursday! Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places & things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today?


Inspiration, Invigoration & A Book Giveaway

Are you feeling lucky? The Great Books lists continue, and as an added bonus we've got a book giveaway. (Keep reading. Reward at end!)

To give my sluggy self a much-needed nudge, I'm always game for a self-help book. It's even better if I get a shove in the writing rear. In this spirit, I offer a longish list of my favorite stop-whining-and-get-writing books.

For Writers
Books that inspire, encourage, educate & motivate:

Every Writer Has A Thousand Faces - by David Biespiel

Writing Down the Bones - by Natalie Goldberg

On Writing - by Stephen King

Bird by Bird - by Anne Lamott

Journal of a Solitude - by May Sarton

The Forest for the Trees - by Betsy Lerner

The Practice of Poetry - by Robin Behn & Chase Twichell

Poemcrazy - by Susan G. Wooldridge

Poetry Everywhere - by Jack Collom & Sheryl Noethe


Now that we're pepped up and ready to write, let's press on! I'm giving away two great books. Win one of these and you'll be armed with information, motivation and verve:

How to Make A Living As A Poet
- by Gary Glazner

 

 

 

 

 

101 Ways to Make Poems Sell: A Guide to Getting and Staying Published
- by Chris Hamilton-Emery

 

 

 

 

Winning is simple. Just leave your name in the comment section below. If you like, tell me the book that gets you inspired to write. On Monday, January 16, 2012, I'll choose two names in a random drawing. You could be a winner. It's that easy!

Feeling shy? Zip me a private email — dcm@drewmyron.com — that says I want to win.  


3 Great Poetry Books (+ 3 more)

It's the end of the year. Let's share our favorites!

3 Great Poetry Books I Read in 2011
Or: Of the many poetry books I enjoyed this year, I returned to these most. 

These collections were recent discoveries for me, but not necessarily published this year.

After the Ark
by Luke Johnson

I don't often read poetry books in one long session but one after the other these poems kept me rapt. In his debut, Johnson, the son of two ministers, deftly blends faith and loss into full-bodied and accomplished poems. And I'm not alone in my praise. The Huffington Post listed the collection as one of the 20 Best Books From Independent Presses.

 

At This Distance
by Bette Lynch Husted

In poems that explore distance — human and geographical — Husted travels her Oregon landscape, as well as universal roads, lonesome towns and the spacious, shaded and shiny places within each of us. "She writes with deep care and conscience," says Naomi Shihab Nye. "Her poems shun nothing, exploring difficult legacies and the mysterious encroachments of 'what people do' with calm humility and curiosity."   Don't miss: Anything a Box Will Hold


A Brief History of Time
by Shaindel Beers

How does she do it? In her debut collection, Beers offers sometimes longish, prose-like poems that twist and turn and keep me reading and re-reading, asking: Did she say that? Did she mean that? How did she do that? These are grounded, hardworking poems that don't stammer or hedge, and yet they are intimate, epic, crafted — and real. "This young woman writes poems crammed with the beauty, irony, and the sadness of the world: crummy jobs, meanness, illness, loss, and all the perspective they bring," says Penelope Scambly Schott.

 

And 3 More
In 2011, I turned and returned to these poetry books:

Underlife
by January Gill O'Neil
O'Neil's debut collection is one of the most visually appealing poetry books I've read. The poetry world is, sadly, cluttered with shoddy production. Thankfully, CavanKerry Press knows the value of good graphic design, quality paper, and a professionally produced product.

 

Pacific
by Ce Rosenow

I wasn't a fan of haiku — until I read this book. And now, I read the short form with great appreciation. "These poems are just like waves — some quiet, some stormy," notes Michael Dylan Welch. "Acceptance, ultimately, is a central stance of this book, welcoming what is received, to the point of celebration."

 

Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room
by Kelli Russell Agodon

In this smart, funny and touching collection, Agodon offers poems both rich and lively. My copy is marked and worn. Favorite poems: Memo to a Busy World, Letter to a Past Life, and Letter to an Absentee Landlord. (Who am I kidding, nearly every page bears a bookmark).

 

What did I miss? What poetry books did you love this year?


Stay tuned. The lists keep coming. Next up:

- Favorite Writing Resource Books

- Books to Read in 2012

  & a Book Giveaway!

 

Thankful Thursday: Closing Year


It's Thankful Thursday — the last of the year. Thank you for spending the Thankful Thursdays with me, for keeping me accountable, appreciative and grateful for things big and small. Sharing thankfulness, I've discovered, slows my pace and makes me mindful, and my gratitude grows when shared with you. Thank you.

 

Bell Song of Thanks

for patience and prayers
    for holding tight
    and letting go

for mothers     
    who cry in the dark
    and pray for light

for fathers
    reticent as rocks
    solid as time
    
for brothers
    that call

for sisters
    that don’t
    
for the near miss
    the second place
    the small dent

for speaking up
    and stilling down

for lungs to run
    legs to stand
    a heart to believe

for sickness
    and balm
    fortitude and grit

for newborns
    cradled in hopeful hands

for goodbyes
    that shook
    left us sobbing and stranded

for faith
    and song
    and the reminding chime

for giving up
    and starting over

despite of,
    because of,
    almost always
    for

love.

 

- Drew Myron


8 Great Novels in 2011

It's the end of the year. Bring on the book lists!

Because:

1. Sharing a good book is almost as fun as reading the book.
You stayed up 'til 2am to finish the book you didn't want to end. Of course you want to tell your friends about it.

2. Easy to digest.
I'm in a daze incurred from holiday snacking. Light reading is required until next week's zealous resolutions kick in. Let's call this the incubation & preparation stage.

3. Curiosity is the root of all writing.
I'm nosy. I want to know what stirs you, stops you, makes you race and linger.

In this spirit, and in this last week of the year, let's share our favorite books.

8 Great Novels I Read in 2011
Or: Of the many books I read this year, these gripped me enough that I still remember them.

These novels were not necessarily published this year because, really, who reads only new releases?

The Year We Left Home
by Jean Thompson
Set in the 1970s to present day, this is a sweeping story of family and change. “Few fiction writers working today have more successfully rendered the sensation of solid ground suddenly melting away, pinpointing that instant when the familiar present is swallowed up by an always encroaching past or voided future,” says The New York Times Book Review.

 

The Crying Tree
by Naseem Rakha
It's ambitious to pack capital punishment, family secrets, and forgiveness into one novel but Naseem Rakha pulls it off — and without arch prose or a  maudlin tone. Published in 2009, the novel has won scores of emerging writer accolades but is still, mysteriously, undersung.

 

 

The Adults
by Alison Espach
A sharp-tongued and often funny story of a young woman growing up in a suburban world in which nothing is as it seems. "Coming of age with a quick wit and a sharp eye," says The New York Times, "as idiosyncratic as it is stirring."


 


The Marriage Plot
by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex offers another immense and absorbing novel. This one, set in the 1980s with an English major as protagonist, is a footnote-like book of literary references, along with inquiries into mental illness, the existence of God, and other heady topics beautifully rendered. As an English major who attended college in the 1980s, I'm a biased reader; I loved this book.

 

Room
by Emma Donoghue
Disturbing and creepy best describe this novel, but also strangely engaging and redemptive. Written in a clipped and claustrophobic style, the prose is as gripping as the story. "A truly memorable novel," says The New York Times Book Review. "It presents an utterly unique way to talk about love, all the while giving us a fresh, expansive eye on the world in which we live.”
 

The Paris Wife
by Paula McLain
A fiction based on fact, The Paris Wife captures the love and marriage between Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson. Set in the creative heyday of 1920s Paris, the story mesmerizes with a lively circle of friends that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 

The Imperfectionists
by Tom Rachman
For his debut, journalist-turned-author Tom Rachman (formerly an editor for the International Herald Tribune) turns out a riveting Rubik's cube of a novel. "Sparkling descriptions not only of newspaper office denizens but of the tricks of their trade, presented in language that is smartly satirical yet brimming with affection," notes The New York Times.

 

Dreams of Joy
by Lisa See
She reeled me with Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and now, several years and books later, she's got me hooked again. Dreams returns to themes of love, family, hardship and secrets — without saccharine or strain, just beautifully complex characters and plot. I'll admit, I was hesitant to pick this one up — does a best-seller really need more attention? I like an underdog author. But this novel, with a million readers or just one, is a winner.

 

What did I miss? What novels did you love this year?


The lists keep coming. Stay tuned. Next up:

- Great Poetry Books of 2011

- Favorite Writing Resource Books

- Books to Read in 2012

  & a Book Giveaway!

 

 

Thankful Thursday: Hope

The other night I attended a beautiful hour of poems and songs in candlelight.

It was a Taize service and just a handful of us assembled in the small church. The evening felt cavernous, as though we were each orphaned and unknown, gathered on the darkest night to fish for light. Everything hushed and reverent. Every voice low and slow. 

There was no sermon. No preaching. Just prayer and reflection, words and tune. The service centered on the four components of Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. For each, a candle was lit, a prayer offered, a song sung, and a poem shared.

There is much joy in this season but it never fails to bring tears, too. Maybe it is simply the season, the short days, the long nights, this time of birth and promise that also carries weight, history, responsibility. Sometimes it is the singing of Silent Night, or the Christmas tree shining with light. Maybe it is the quietude that urges internalization, asks What can I give?

The service this week was quiet and peaceful. Days later I am thinking of the simple prayer that struck me most: Grant us the courage to hope, and the poem that followed:

Hope   

It hovers in dark corners

before the lights are turned on, 

it shakes sleep from its eyes 

and drops from mushroom gills, 

it explodes in the starry heads 

of dandelions turned sages, 

it sticks to the wings of green angels 

that sail from the tops of maples.    

It sprouts in each occluded eye 

of the many-eyed potato, 

it lives in each earthworm segment 

surviving cruelty, 

it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog, 

it is the mouth that inflates the lungs 

of the child that has just been born.   

It is the singular gift 

we cannot destroy in ourselves, 

the argument that refutes death, 

the genius that invents the future, 

all we know of God.   

It is the serum which makes us swear 

not to betray one another; 

it is in this poem, trying to speak. 

 — Lisel Mueller

 

On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for the quiet hours to still the mind and mine the heart. I am thankful for the courage to hope.

It's Thankful Thursday! Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate people, places & things.


On Sunday

The Sunday self contemplates and considers, falls gratefully and with recognition into words like these:

It is only in the silence that our voice emerges. It is only in the movement of the hand across page, one word following the next, in the crafting of sentences that we know ourselves. We can talk ourselves blue in the face, and we may be telling a certain kind of truth, but it is not the deepest truth, not the truth of our private heart. When people ask me when I knew I wanted to be a writer, or when I "decided" to become a writer, it is this I think about. This bittersweet pleasure, this pressure and longing to find myself on the page.

— Dani Shapiro

Read more here.

 

Thankful Thursday: A to Z

Yesterday I shared, encouraged and invited. Today, I entertain. It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to count our joys and list our thanks. I'll share my Alphabet Gratitude Poem if you'll share yours.

A to Z, an abbreviated guide of gratitudes

alcoves, afterthoughts, basil, beaches, cashmere, caramel corn, candy corn, daffodils, eagerness, fortitude, forgiveness, gladioluses, grandma's turquoise ring, hellos & how-dos, Hood River, humility, ice cream, intention, jellybeans, kindness, lavender, Lake Hattie, Mallorca, Mexico, merlot, notes, nods, nuts, ocean, olive oil, popcorn, pacifists, quiet, reading, running, sunshine, structure, surprises, tapioca, Taos, tides, underwear, understanding, understatement, violets, vineyards, value, Wyoming, wonder, words, xoxo, yes, zigzagging — across pages, miles, memory, your heart.

Your turn! Share your Alphabet Gratitude in the comment section below. Don't be shy — let's share our starts and scratches, our works-in-progress and works-at-rest. Let's exercise the writing muscle, aches and all.

 

Try this: Alphabet Poem

A friend recently created a poem by combining two of my favorite things — lists and thankfulness. In Love's Alphabet, poet Ann Staley uses the abcs as a frame to express gratitude. I like this idea. Let's try our own!

Send me your alphabet poems and I'll post them here on Thankful Thursday, the weekly pause of appreciation. Simply post your poems in the comment section below, or send your work via email to dcm@drewmyron.com.

Don't be shy — let's share our starts and scratches, our works-in-progress and works-at-rest. Let's exercise the writing muscle, aches and all.

Love's Alphabet
— Name one thing you love, says Steve

(Liberty) apples and Ace,
bed time,
the cats & Courtney.
Dusting, several Davids
errands (crossing off the list)
fabric stores
(Specialty ones like Pendleton,
or general, run-of-the-mill stores, like Joanne’s),
and friends — life-long like Kathy
or brand-new, like Bob, whom I met yesterday.
Granola, giraffes, and gingerbread,
hot dogs (with mustard, and a baseball game)
icicles
and jam.
Knitting needles all set up with angora yarn,
lemons and lemonade.
Marigolds along the walk-way border & between the rows.
NPR all the time
and river otters.
The P-E-A-C-E sign and the Post Office,
the quick and the quixotic.
The Romantics, a romantic, and any river.
Nighttime stars and sky and SR.
(Late August) tomatoes, Thanksgiving,
the unflappable,
Valentines on any day.
Writing, fooling around with words.
(There must be something besides xylaphon
which creates an unwelcome noise. Maybe
a flower or a bird, a scientific name!)
Xanthippe (I’ll let you look that up!),
and yellow.
Zurich, indeed,
all of Switzerland — in any season

- Ann Staley

 

On Sunday: "Hello from perfect!"

Today, The Lake

Today, the lake
is a mirror. You can bend over and see yourself. You like yourself like this, this angle. You are balanced.
     Tomorrow, the lake will be a swimming hole. You will watch your children, Buddy and Jane, in their bathing suits, streaks of sunscreen on their noses. You will watch your husband watching as they play.
    The lake will also be a postcard. "Hello from perfect!" it might say. You will wish it could all freeze like this.
     Next week, the lake will be a memory. "Nice summer" you will say. "We had fun."
     You will look into the bathroom mirror. That will be your lake. You will look dead on and uneven. As if something could knock you down.
     It's something that has been coming. By spring, your husband will leave you. You have been noticing his absences, his muffled late-night phone calls.
     Your children, too, will start to leave. Each day school will teach them something else about the world. Explorers and geography. One day, they will bolt in, plop their books on the counter. They will tell you that even though they like the lake, it's boring—there's nothing to do. They will ask to go to the ocean instead.

— Francine Witte
from Water-Stone Review, Volume 14

 

Thankful Thursday: Guilty Pleasures

It's Thankful Thursday. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our gratitude. What are you thankful for today? A person, a place, a thing? A story, a song, a poem? What makes your world expand?


I've entered the season of gluttony, which is quickly followed by guilt. In an effort to shake the shame and simply enjoy the excess, this week I'm giving thanks for small, indulgent pleasures:

Mountain Crunch
Crunchy caramel corn and almonds drenched in white chocolate — from Roberta's Chocolates, Candies & Nuts, based in Denver, Colorado. Years ago, I lived down the street from Roberta's small, unmarked shop. I made frequent stops, and rarely shared my sweets. Now I live 1000 miles away, and I'm thankful for online shopping and parents who bring a bag when they visit.


Modern Family
I don't watch much television. And when I do, I mostly annoy others with my commentary — What's with the overacting? Who writes this crap? — before leaving the room to read a book. Still, I have my sporadic guilty pleasure viewing, shows watched alone and in marathon stretches. For a while I was hooked on Say Yes to the Dress. Now it's Modern Family. My taste in mindless distraction is improving.

Magazines
I read earnest literary journals, dark novels and complicated poems. Quick, someone pass the People magazine! While it's vital to feed the mind, sometimes that heavy head needs a break. I don't care if the glossies are full of Photoshopped images and anorexic child models. I don't care if they contribute to my body image issues. Well, really, I do, and for years I avoided fashion magazines for just this reason -- but I've learned to compartmentalize. Mind over body. My mind needs a break and my body's surrendered.

 This Thankful Thursday has turned into Confession Thursday. Must pleasure and shame be entwined?

 Enough about me! What (guilty pleasures) are you thankful for today?

 

I Sing the Book Electric!*


We've come a long way baby!  Book and blog — we've gone digital.

• Now you can enjoy Forecast in three wonderful ways:

Ebook - just $3.99   

Softcover Book - $35

Hardcover Book - $48

About the Book
Using daily horoscopes as a launching point, writer Drew Myron tumbled and turned astrological prose into what she calls “horoscope poems,” a form that — like a horoscope — directs and suggests.

Complementing the poems are 12 interpretive oil paintings by artist Tracy Weil. In a style that has been called “Dr. Seuss meets Van Gogh,” Weil paints imagined landscapes where realism and surrealism meet in a colorful world both playful and profound.

Collaborating for over 20 years, Weil and Myron share an unusual approach to the creative process: They encourage ‘accidents’ to emerge. In this space of adventure and play, the duo blend forms to create inventive, accessible art. The result is a combination of chance and possibility, the zing of what is and what could be — in art and in everyday life.

What's your sign? Each of the works are sign specific. Which one speaks to you? A key is included in the back of the book.

• Also! Now you can read this blog on your Kindle.
Get it here:  Off the Page - Kindle Edition

 

* as in:
- I Sing the Body Electric, a 1855 poem from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- A song from the  film Fame (1980 film).


On Sunday: Less yourself

The poem is not the world.
It isn't even the first page of the world.

But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.
It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,
like the door of the temple,
so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,
and less yourself than part of everything.

 
Yesterday, driving lonely roads, my want returned. As before, I wanted a spiritual experience. 

Not church. Not saving. Not even epiphany.

But dramatic transformation.

So much of life is showing up. Listening. Being present. These are not small things. They sound small but they are not small. They are not even simple. In this dailyness, I know, is transformation. 

But you can't see it. Not right away.

There are no harps or bugles or sweeping sounds. A lot of life is crickets.

And so, for many years, this urge arises: I want to awake with new eyes. I want to really see.

 

 * * *

 

A friend and I roll our eyes at those who boast of being "called." We imagine lightening bolts and mock their certainty. We envy this sort of clear direction because we think most of life is figuring out the path as you are on it. This method of travel doesn't feel spiritual, determined or even accredited, but it is our way.

 

* * *

 

This week I found a book wedged within another. The Leaf and The Cloud by Mary Oliver. It's a thin book of just one poem. (Caveat: I am not an Oliver follower. I like the wildly popular Wild Geese — most likely because it departs from her usual nature-gazing style). 

But this thin volume has me entranced. The sentences are short, clear, and the sentiment reverent and reflective. Reading it, I am giver and receiver. I am hushed and expectant.

Would it be better to sit in silence?
To think everything, to feel everything, to say nothing?
This is the way of the orange gourd.
This is the habit of the rock in the river, over which
the water pours all night and all day.
But the nature of man is not the nature of silence.
Words are the thunders of the mind.
Words are the refinement of the flesh.
Words are the responses to the thousand curvaceous moments—
we just manage it —
sweet and electric, words flow from the brain
and out the gate of the mouth.

We make books of them, out of hesitations and grammar.
We are slow and choosy.
This is the world.

I copy these words, messy and quick, into my journal. I want to inscribe the tone onto my muscle, my memory, the mysterious place in the brain where words gather to mix with experience and reason and later rearrange into poem. I do not understand this place or process but I hope immersion will leave a residue.

 

* * *

 

Yesterday, traveling roads far from home, I loosened in the quiet. Tires on route. Rolling miles. The sun showed up, warmed the dashboard with light. The pale sky brightened, and I could see.

 

And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening
is the real work.

Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem.

 

 

Wish List

This season of giving is making me greedy. Shopping for gifts the other day I came home with a bag of goodies mostly for me.

It's probably a good thing my 2011 Wish List is short, and that it offers great gifts for readers & writers to both give and get:

2012 Women Artists Datebook
This handy 5x7-inch, spiral-bound, day planner offers 12 months of poetry and art by women writers and artists — and includes the poem, Why I Knit, by Marjorie Power of Corvallis, Oregon.

 

 

 

The Poets Laureate Anthology
A collection of poems, gathered and edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt, from each of the 43 poets who have been named U.S. poet laureate since the post was established in 1937. The anthology includes introductions and work from Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Elizabeth Bishop, and more.

Bad Writing
A wry documentary from a self-declared "wannabe poet," featuring interviews with Margaret Atwood, Steve Almond, Nick Flynn, David Sedaris and more. Favorite line (from the trailer below): "There's no rule," says novelist Margaret Atwood, "that says you get steadily better."

 

What's on your Wish List?
What gifts are you giving? or hope to receive?

 

Last taste

In the spirit of thanks giving, we've feasted on words all week.

Thank you, readers and friends, for sharing your thankful-themed poems, prayers, paragraphs & praise.

Today, we wrap up the Feast of Words with poems from Gisele Vincent-Page and Jill Hardin. 

It's the season of gratitude. Let us savor and share.

Time

Time, how lovely of you
to sit here with me.

The lake's edge of any entity

Water Rock Sand
All over the land.

Time amiss in bliss
Time for that, time for this

Time, time, time

Yesterday, today, tomorrow

Time, how lovely of you to sit.


— Gisele Vincent-Page

 

Gratitude Is

Gratitude is ... Gladitude!
Its Longitude and Latitude
expand greatly our Attitude …
Thus … adjusting to Wondrous
the ever changeable Altitude
at which
we find ourselves
Flying!


— Jill Hardin


After feast

The Feast of Words continues. Today we move into the fullness of reflection. Like a good meal, gratitude fills and slows to show us all we have — and all we could lose.

Today, poems from Rick Campbell and Ann Staley.

Rick Campbell, of Florida, is a poet, professor and the director of Anhinga Press:

Rainbow on Winding Creek

When the rain fell fat
drops splattered my head
and shirt like water ballons
falling from the sky.  At the gate
the bluest rainbow arched
over the dirt road, beginning
and end, both touched earth.
I walked over in the name
of science to discover if a man
could pass through a rainbow
and come out the man he was.
No.  When a man walks
through a rainbow he never returns.
He lives in Kansas, as if in witness
protection.  His daughter, whom he left
on the porch waits and waits. The rain
stops. The sun sets. Darkness falls
and her Dad never comes home.
She gets cards postmarked from Tulsa,
Enid, Dumas, Dalhart, just pictures
of cattle, fences, long skies and thick clouds.
No words, but in the bottom
corner a crude fleur de lis.
She knows it’s him. She wants to believe
he’ll come back, that he didn’t just
walk away in the rain. She loves him
but he’s afraid that too faded
away when the light that fell through
clouds, shekinahs for believers,
shifted a few degrees west
and the rainbow was gone.

— Rick Campbell

 

Ann Staley, a poet and teacher living in Oregon, reminds us that the ordinary is quickly turned extraordinary:

Giving Thanks  

We pulled out of our driveway at 2 p.m.
Taking a bottle of red and a chilled white, a baguette.
Humboldt Fog Blue and a Tumalo Farms Classico,
also a present for the hostess and a book of poetry.
We drove across the valley, about an hour to Sweet Home,
where a table was set for twenty-two plus
a couple of toddlers and a new baby named Desmond.
Folks had flown in from Chicago, Seattle and Redlands,
driven from Portland, Eugene, Corvallis,
a house full of guests, some staying for the week,
the weekend or overnight, with a fabulous breakfast
promised in the morning.  

At 5 pm I was in the living room by the fireplace
telling my friend Ted about our Italy adventure,
all the details including the Opal we’d rented
in Zurich and driven 2000 km on Eye-talian
freeways and backroads, including up over the Alps
and down into Switzerland, a hair-raising event filled
with U-turns, backing up for buses filled with nuns and tourists.

I was drinking a glass of wine when Dave motioned me into
the kitchen and then to the bathroom just beyond
where Courtney was throwing up into the toilet,
had shed his wet trousers and boxers
and was stretched-out on the bathroom floor, a pillow under his head.
In his overnight case I found dry jeans, and then
we waited for the EMTs.  

When they arrived his blood pressure was 36/50.
A few minutes later it had improved to 50/80,
and while the EMT’s pressed about 12 little heart monitors
onto his chest, I began to wonder if I was going
to be phoning his mother and sister and brothers,
planning — you know — a funeral. Still, by the time the EMT’s had finished,
Courtney’s heart was beating at something akin to normal,
and he could take a few steps down the stairs
& lie down on the stretcher that went into the ambulance.  

Two friends, Lisa and Lili, accompanied me as
we followed that ambulance about 15 miles to the nearest
Emergency Room where we ate some turkey and dressing
and pearl onions and waited for the E-Room’s
Doctor Rose to appear on the scene.
After our holiday dinner, I went back to wait with CC.
He was lucid, smiling, and I chided him:
If you ever wet your pants in public again, I will have to divorce you.
We laughed. And began to think like normal people again.
No funeral. Just a ride home after the other tests and bloodwork.
I returned to the dinner, having missed all of it, to cheers
of happiness and thanks-giving. Courtney would live
to taste another turkey and to celebrate next time.  

Now we’re back home. Champagne and candle light.
With plans for breakfast and a walk along the Willamette,
gray and fulsome, trees dropping leaves,
snow expected on the mountain passes.
Whatever “Black Friday” is about, I could care less.
It was a dark Thursday night, and tomorrow
the sun will rise whether we see it or not. 

— Ann Staley
Thanksgiving 2011