Thankful Thursday: Chance & Cheer

Woman Ironing (Silhouette) by Edgar DegasAll week I collected cheery thoughts.

I am thankful for this, this and that. I adopted the simple satisfaction of one who lives lightly, writing: small bird, blue sky, watermelon.

You know, the kind of pollyanna blather that drives you crazy if you're feeling less than cheerful.

This morning, I was in iron mind: slow and firm. The world felt full of clamor, too many opinions and expectations, and I just wanted to fold towels and iron shirts. The mind and body reaches for order.

You can't rush an ironing job. Or, you can, but your wrinkles will reveal a hurried mind.

No one irons anymore. My nearest dry-cleaner, 25 miles to the north, has shut down, as has another shop 25 miles to the south. I'm pressing my shirts, knowing that no one within 50 miles is dressing smoothly. Don't worry, I don't iron my jeans. That's just weird.

I use spray starch. I like a crisp collar. It's probably bad for the ozone, but rumples are bad for my mental health.

Leaning into my task, I think of pressing on.

When I was a teenager, my uncle and I attempted suicide on the very same day. We weren't close and he lived worlds away, but for one day we were connected through our own desperate acts. One of us survived.

So much of life depends upon chance. And wrinkles. And a good balance of cheer.

 

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to give thanks for people, places, and things in our lives. What are you thankful for today?

 

Get Nourished

One of poetry’s gifts, for me,

is the nourishment of an inner life —

the outside brought in, rearranged,

and sent back out again.

— Shirley McPhillips
Poem Central: Word Journeys with Readers and Writers

 

Win this book! Free. No strings, spam, pressure, or prodding. I'll pay postage, and you'll get a great book. 

To enter the drawing, simply click here and add your name and contact info in the blog comments section by Tuesday, August 12, 2014. I'll randomly (eyes closed!) choose a name from the entries. The winner will be announced on August 13, 2014. 

Yes, it's that easy.


Thankful Thursday: Pressure

Sun Reader, by Ginny Hoyle

Some days everything comes together — idea, expectation, execution — and you say ahhhh.

This year, as a complement to the Denver County Fair poetry contest, I introduced Poems-Write-Now, an on-demand poetry booth. Thanks to the skill and enthusiasm of a team of poets, it worked just as imagined — and, well, actually, better!

Poets sat ready, pens poised and minds open as "customers" stopped by to give a topic and get a poem. A man wanted a poem about cats. A woman asked for a poem about chocolate. A brother and sister requested a poem about siblings. There were poems about kayaks, sunsets, freaks, geeks, insomnia, parades, pie (and pi — in the same poem!), and more.

Customers were asked to pay what they could, and 100% of proceeds went to a local literary organization (this year, Art from Ashes).

Poets wrote under pressure, composing full poems in under 15 minutes. While customers wandered away, poets went swiftly to work, drafting on-the-spot, quickly scratching out and into a full and finished piece, then copying the poem onto a clean sheet and stamping the poem with the official "Denver County Fair Poem" seal. The pressure, combined with spontaneous creativity, was exhilarating.

When the customer returned, the poet shared the poem aloud, and a powerful exchange occurred, a wonderful charge of expectation, surprise, and delight. So moved was one customer that she cried. Others were confounded. How did you do that, they asked. And how did you write so fast? 

"I enjoyed the challenge and it turned out to be a lot of fun," said poet Ginny Hoyle, who was joined by a host of other poets — Kathryn Bass, Eduardo Gabrieloff, Hilary DePolo, Lynn Wagner, Dan Manzanares, and more — each working one to two hour shifts. "It’s just the kind of thing that can demonstrate that poetry is fun and alive and now."

Lucky me, I got to be both participating poet and patron of poetry. Here's a poem made-just-for-me, written by Ginny Hoyle, in response to the topic "sun":

Sun Reader

To read the sun is to mark

the course of days. To know

the sun by its angle of repose is to be a creature

of the high plains.

This much she knows. She needs that bright heat

sun that sinks and stirs the blood. She lies

in the light, her hungry mind shielded

by a spine, buried under the covers of

a hardbound book that takes off like

a redtailed hawk, soaring over fields

of daisies fringed in white.

 

— Ginny Hoyle
Aug 3 2014


This poem is such a perfect fit that I think Ginny, whom I'd never met, is an unusually intuitive poet.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am energized and thankful for poets and pressure, and people who make poems and people who want poems.

 

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to give thanks for people, places, and things in our lives. What are you thankful for today?

 

Outsiders are the real insiders

We're pumping up the poetry at the Denver County Fair.

Find me here, in the swirl of three days of crazy. This wacky Wonka-like event has been called the "craziest county fair in America," offering human hamster-balls, unicorn rides, robot opera, and zombies, along with pies, pickles and, yes, poems! 

Look for the poets — the tame outsiders of the literary world — at the Poetry Performance where contest winners will share their poems, and at Poems-Write-Now, where poets are penning on-the-spot poems.

Find me here, somewhere between the Cannabis Cabaret and the Miss County Fair Drag Queen Contest.

At the Denver County Fair, outsiders are the real insiders.

 

The less you know

Diane Arbus, 1967. Photo by Roz Kelly.

I'm standing among secrets at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

"A photograph is a secret about a secret," said photographer Diane Arbus, whose work is on display. "The more it tells you the less you know." 

It's a gallery of stark truth. The famed photographer is noted for black-and-white photographs of "deviant and marginal people (dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers) or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal."

Arbus believed that a camera could be "a little bit cold, a little bit harsh" but its scrutiny revealed the truth; the difference between what people wanted others to see and what they really did see — the flaws."

Writing, I'm thinking, is much the same. We are veiled and we are exposed. We control the "story" and yet we have no control. Art is in the balance. Or, even better, art is in the imbalance.

"If one is writing well, one is totally exposed," said Kay Ryan, former U.S. Poet Laureate, in the Paris Review. "But at the same time, one has to feel thoroughly masked or protected."

I like secrets, knowing, keeping, storing the mystery deep. One of my favorite poems is A Secret Life by Stephen Dunn:

A Secret Life

Why you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don't say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby . . .

When I am writing, I am a cocoon of secrets. I am both masked and revealed. Aren't we all? And isn't that the delicious draw of creating anything at all?

 

On this & that, and how are you?

Jessica Hagy - Indexed

On Dinner
The pantry is empty, again, and as I'm shopping, again, I realize much of my life is spent buying family packs of pork chops. And there's just two of us. And I don't really like pork chops.

On Swimming
It's been years since I was surrounded by jumping, squealing, swimsuited children with bird-like bones and rounded bellies, and at the pool I remember how much I like water. But it’s never easy, the strokes, the breathing. So much thinking. I like to float, the water sloshes in my ears and hushes my thinking away.

On Getting Through
A man we know hung himself.

“It’s so sad,” says my husband.

“Yes,” I say. “You just never know what people are going through. But what could we do even if we had known?”

“Save him,” he says, plainly.

We're sitting outside and a full moon burns low.

“I don’t think it works that way,” I answer. “Sometimes you can’t change the pull of sadness.”

We've said so much we are afraid to say anything more so we sit together with the heaviness of truth.

On Dreams
No one wants to hear your dreams. Don’t share them and never, ever, in detail. That said, I’m having vivid dreams. It leaves me exhausted, as if I’ve spent the night working through a whole day. And my god, don't I do enough of this in my waking hours?

On God
I’m writing long letters to God. My calls went unanswered, desperation settled in, and I grabbed a pen. Maybe he thinks me cheeky, wordy, whiny. Letters are best, because even if he did call I couldn't tell which voice is his or mine, and which is the one I want to hear.

On Writing
None of it is stellar. But that’s not the point. The point is to express, and in that act to feel less sad and alone, to find and hold the small points of light.

On Letters
Maybe we’re all writing letters to God. When we garden or hike or bike or sail. When we sing or paint or write. We want to be held, heard, healed. Everything then, every wax and ramble, every accounting and regret, is a sort of holding on.

Dear God. Dear Life. Dear Friend. I am here. How are you?

 

 

Poem Central: Win this book!

"The first important thing to understand about this book,” writes Shirley McPhillips, “is that it is based on my belief that poetry is not an academic subject but an art. And therefore it belongs where life is.”

And right away, I'm hooked. I'm in. I'm taking this train all the way to the station.

Billed as a place where people and poems meet, Poem Central: Word Journeys with Readers and Writers is true to its title. Packed with tips, techniques and practical tools, this book is a focused and valuable resource for poets, teachers, and poets-in-the-making.

Author-editor Shirley McPhillips is a seasoned teacher, speaker, writer, and poet laureate for Choice Literacy. Her path to poetry is road-tested and real, and she deftly combines solid structure, thorough research, and genuine encouragement.

Divided into three parts — weaving poetry into lives and classrooms, reading poems, and writing poems — Poem Central gathers a range of voices: professional poets, inspired teachers, known and unknown writers, artists, illustrators, musicians, editors, and students, who offer examples and samples of how poetry plays a part in their lives. This down-to-earth approach gives the book an encouraging and inclusive vibe. [Disclosure: I’m one of those "unknown writers." McPhillips found my poem, Instructions, exactly and asked for permission to include it in the book.] 

This toothy and well-designed resource stands proudly with other gems in its genre — The Crafty Poet by Diane Lockward and Awakening the Heart by Georgia Heard, for example — and the book’s elaborate resources and reference sections lead to even more treasures. 

Best of all, McPhillips speaks my language:

“One of poetry’s gifts, for me, is the nourishment of an inner life — the outside brought in, rearranged, and sent back out again,” she writes. “It is a meeting place for the objects and activity of the outside world and the inner world of consciousness and imagination. Recognizing, attuning, reaching out, connecting, responding. This is the place for poetry; this is the attitude of poetry. This is how it shows us a way we might face life.”

Win this book!
To enter a drawing to win a Poem Central by Shirley McPhillips, simply add your name and contact info in the blog comments section by August 12, 2014. I'll randomly (eyes closed!) choose a name from the entries. The winner will be announced on August 13, 2014.

 

Thankful Thursday: Signs

Newport, Oregon

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.

It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things & more.

It's no secret that I'm in search of signs; Each day I read two horoscopes (strength in second opinions), and turn a simple phrase into pertinent message. I'm soft for mystery, meaning, serendipity.

During Summer Writing Adventure Camp last month, the youngsters and I stumbled into our "theme song," a tune sang at every street sign: Stop, look, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.

Thank you, Buffalo Springfield. Of course, none of the children had heard of the band, the song, or the war prompting the song.

To be true, I was first to belt it out, as an urgent plea to get the youngsters to, well, stop for traffic. But then the tune hung around as a call to pay attention to the world. Full disclosure: I was doing most of the singing, off-key, and frequently confusing "sound" for "sign."

You can imagine my delight, then, when we discovered an actual sign tucked into a wooded lot in the heart of Newport, Oregon's historic Nye Beach: 

I love you, too.  

So sweet and warm. So yes.

Like all good signs, there's a backstory. Artist Shannon Weber is "on a mission to change the world one love note at a time." Learn all about her project at http://www.loveyou2.org/

We stood staring at the sign in wonder. We took photos (it's generational, you know, to view life as a photo waiting for capture). We gawked and wondered: who? what? what more?

And then we discovered, beyond the sign, sculpture among weeds, art within bramble. This wasn't a neglected lot at all! How many times had we walked right past, never giving a second, deeper, look?

A simple sign, of just four words, changed our pace, perception, and day.

 

What are you thankful for today?

 

on a mission to change the world one love note at a time - See more at: http://www.loveyou2.org/about-me/#sthash.0x3tURUQ.dpuf
a San Francisco-based ephemeral artist on a mission to change the world one love note at a time. - See more at: http://www.loveyou2.org/about-me/#sthash.0x3tURUQ.dpuf
a San Francisco-based ephemeral artist on a mission to change the world one love note at a time. - See more at: http://www.loveyou2.org/about-me/#sthash.0x3tURUQ.dpuf

Are you Pliable or Payable?

Things are often not what they seem.

Lately, many things are not what I see.

I’m in a loop of misreadings.*

 

While reading a church service program

What I read: 
Following the service you may stay for prayer, or exist silently.

What it actually said: 
Following the service you may stay for prayer, or exit silently.


While reading a fashion & style blog

What I read:
An Object of Desire: The Perfectly Colored Blog

What it actually said:
An Object of Desire: The Perfectly Colored Bag


While paying bills

What I read: 
Accounts Pliable

What it really said:
Accounts Payable


I much prefer a pliable balance.

Do we see what we want to see? And is the tired mind a conduit for surprising, better lines of our own?

I have a friend who writes every night, in bed, before going to sleep. Even when she is tired. Especially when she is tired. That's when the good stuff happens, she says. The mind is slogged and lets loose what is normally corrected and contained.

May we all have tired but willing, pliable minds (and bank accounts).

What are you reading, or misreading? 


* With a nod to Sarah J. Sloat, a writer who often shares misreadings on her blog, The Rain in My Purse.


Thankful Thursday (all week long)

Where I Belong, by Tristan Dimick, at Summer Writing Adventure Camp

 
I spent the week at Summer Writing Adventure Camp.

At Seashore Family Literacy, on the central Oregon Coast, learning and laughing with a group of delightful young writers, ages 9 to 14. 

Combining creative writing with high-energy explorations, we hiked Cape Perpetua, crawling beneath the 500-year-old Giant Spruce tree; walked the span of the Alsea Bay Bridge, with cars rumbling beside and the bay lapping below; traveled by public bus to Newport's Nye Beach, where we toured an art gallery and invited visual art to inform our literary art; kayaked through the Alsea Bay and Lint Slough, spotting herons and hawks.

We learned restaurant manners in an artful cafe. And created dance sentences and movement machines. And, with Pablo Neruda as our guide, we asked unanswerable questions.

We listened, touched, tasted, and laughed. We read together. We grew still and quiet. We wrote under and through, around, and about — poems, stories, sillyness and seriousness — then learned how to shape, polish, revise.

Like Tristan, for five full days I knew where I belonged.

Thankful Thursday lasted all week long.


Thankful Thursday: Stacks


Even better than holding, touching, smelling, and hugging new books is taking them home and reading them in your own bed, under your own covers, with your own lamp shining beside you until someone yells for you to turn it off and get some sleep.

— The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared
by Alice Ozma


On this Thankful Thursday, let us praise the summer reading season!

Oh, the beauty of light days and long nights.

Of books and stacks and anticipation.

Oh, the sweet, sweet immersion a good book brings. 

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, books, and more. What are you thankful for today? What's in your stack?

 

Sisters: "Our home of friendship"

Peace, love & understanding: Drew and Cindra
She called me It.

As in, Why does It have to tag along?

I taunted back, called her Big Calves (then recoiled, years later, when my own body ballooned into awkward adolescence). We were five years — and a world — apart.

I was a brat, there's no polish to put on it, and she was unbelievably patient. All those growing years, she was my kind protector — doing my chores so I wouldn't get in trouble, caring for me while my parents worked.

Once, when we were just 13 and 18 years old, long before cell phones and hovering parents, we took a roadtrip from Colorado to California.

Once, she dropped everything — a new husband and a year-old baby — to rescue me when I was sick, alone, and living 1,000 miles away.

Through asthma attacks and deep depression, my sister has been at my side.

We're very different. She's a stay-at-home mother to six children; I'm childless by choice. She watches American Idol; I barely watch tv. She sings and sobs through The Sound of Music; I search for sad, dark films.

Now, separated by time zones, we've never been closer. Last month, enjoying a rare visit together, my sister and I fell into our shorthand: fast chat, laughter, and knowing nods. My teenage niece tried to make sense of us.

"So," she said, turning to me, "You write about people you know?"

"Umm," I said, "sure, sometimes."

"Have you written about Mom?"

"Umm, no."

"Why not?"

Her innocent inquiry stopped me short. My sister, my friend, my heart, I've struggled to write about you, to understand and express the deep and complicated love we share.

In a synchronicity, the next week I picked up The Knotted Bond: Oregon Poets Speak of Their Sisters. In this collection, dozens of writers — including Kim Stafford, Ann Staley, Paulann Petersen, Dorianne Laux and more —  explore the tangle of family bonds and baggage, ranging from utter joy to penetrating grief.

Liz Nakazawa, the editor who pulled the collection together, offers a lovely dedication: "To my sister . . . You are sunshine when it rains, wind in my sails, and the shared pillar of our home of friendship."

Here, in these pages thick with heartache and love, I didn't find the story of my sister and me but I did discover the work of writers who did what I cannot: put words to the beautiful twine of sister-friends.

 

On Mixed Heritage

Mari L'Esperance — writer, editor, psychotherapist

To be hybrid is

to anticipate the future,

wrote Japanese-Irish American

artist Isamu Noguchi in 1942.

Here in Los Angeles in 2014,

that future is now."


— Mari L'Esperance

 

From 3 Good Books, a series in which I ask artists and writers to share their favorite books on a given theme. Go on, head over to Push Pull Books for 3 Good Books.


Thankful Thursday: Without Words

People like to talk.

A lot.

And loudly.

I realize this on a long slog home, traveling east to west, through multiple airports and time zones.

On the first leg of the flight, toddlers squirm and scream. Parents look away, oblivious or exhausted or both. This is all now routine. In the aisle a man swaggers about a merger; he is important and this is urgent. Stink-eye stares are futile. Even an iPod can't cover this squall.

On the second flight of the never-ending journey, the man seated behind me has left his girlfriend and is moving out west. He's looking for a job, and just may land one thanks to the man across the aisle who tells his new pal about an awesome video game that involves wizards and killing, and then gives him a job lead. Video Game Man recently started a business with the woman sitting next to him, because "the construction business is, like, booming big-time."  

I don't want to know any of this; I'm not even trying to listen. I catch all this with plugged airplane ears, that's how loud the conversation.

In front of me, a woman is coughing up a lung — for a full four hours.

Once landed, the bus ride to the parking lot features a woman screeching into her phone about losing something — her wallet? her mind? — who then panics as she nearly misses her stop because she's so distracted with herself. 

Weary and worn, we finally get to our car. The engine offers a solitary start. I hear only the rhythm of tires on road. No radio. No talk. Just beautiful, beautiful silence. Cocooned in the midnight lull, I'm thankful for a world without words.

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Joy contracts and expands in relation to our attention and appreciation. What are you thankful for today?

 

(Un)Natural Resources

Lee Lee — artist, mother, thinker

Where science

offers authenticity,

art is rooted in our

emotional core and

has the capacity

to touch people

in a way that

encourages

action."

                                                                                — Lee Lee

 

From 3 Good Books, a series in which I ask artists and writers to share their favorite books on a given theme. Go on, head over to Push Pull Books to learn about 3 Good Books.


 

Sweet Grief at Benton County Museum

We're hitting the road! Sweet Grief, a painting & poetry collaboration by Senitila McKinley and myself, is heading to the Benton County Museum in Philomath, Oregon.

Will you join us for the party?

Sweet Grief: Paintings & Poems on Love and Loss
Benton County Museum, May 23 - July 5, 2014
Opening Reception on Friday, May 23, from 5 to 7pm

We're happy to share the exhibition with Permission 2 Play, a support-through-quilting group for cancer patients. The quilters, both novice and experienced, share their passion for textile arts, try out new and interesting techniques, and give themselves "permission to play."

Sweet Grief debuted in April 2012 at the Windermere Triad Gallery in Seal Rock, Oregon, where it enjoyed an eight month-long run. In 2013, Sweet Grief was on display at the Visual Arts Center in Newport, Oregon, and in Summer 2014 the show exhibit at the historical Benton County Museum.

To learn more about Sweet Grief and the special-edition exhibition book, visit Push Pull Books.

Thankful Thursday: Lost & Found

Getting Lost, a write-over poem by Drew Myron.

Well, isn't this a nice surprise? My poem about getting lost is getting found.

Getting Lost, a write-over poem I created during National Poetry Month, was recently published in the Eugene Register Guard newspaper.

Many thanks to Brian Juenemann, of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, for using his monthly column to shine light on Oregon's literary landscape.

And because everything comes from what came before, a nod to that tattered Rudyard Kipling tome that I write over and upon, and to Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost, whose words circle my head.


It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. What are you thankful for today?