Odd Bits from a Creative Life

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A Tree Born Crooked, Alaska, Cloud Pharmacy, colonized Tlingit women, Common Place, December Book Clubs, Erika Dreifus, Hannah Maynard, John T Biggs, language of the earth, Metzger, noir, Pandamoon, Pen-L Publishing, Popsicle Styx, Practicing Writing, Southern grit lit, Steph Post, Stuart Rojstaczer, surrealist photos, Susan Rich, symbolist painting, Teller poem, The Art of Slow Writing, The Mathematician's Shiva, The Next Best Book Club, Tlingit creation story, Tlingit raven, Walking on Air, Women's Poetry List-Serv, work in progress, Writing for Life

PAINTING

I’ve been working on some symbolist paintings about the Tlingit Raven.  Watch a versions of the Tlingit creation story here.

I’ll be trying out some interesting techniques with my new painting mentor beginning in January.  Very excited to embark in this new direction. Have also found some support for my collage work in a small studio in California that will allow access to more materials. Always nice.

READING

Enjoyed the math-flecked debut The Mathematician’s Shiva by Stuart Rojstaczer over the holidays. A tale of family angst in the wake of “the greatest female mathematician in history[‘s]” death and the odd bunch of followers that descend on the family in search of her (possible) solution to the Navier-Stokes problem.  Recommended to me by Erika Dreifus of Practicing Writing and now a pick by BooksAMillion for its December Book Clubs, this is definitely worth a read even by mathphobes.

I also gave a glowing endorsement to John T. Biggs latest Popiscle Styx from PenL.  It’s an impressive sophomore novel that deserves its own category .  I”m going with noir/magical realism/Okie local color/crime for now. Good stocking stuffer!

You might also want to pick up Walking on Air if you are in the mood for some Mississippi small town life.   I’ll have more on this story collection soon and a review of Steph Post’s latest N. Florida noir/ Southern grit lit from Pandamoon with  a full review in  Small Press Book Reviews later this month.

 

 

 

 

POETRY

The Women’s Poetry List-serv has been having an interesting discussion on writing books.  I picked up two of their recommendations: The Art of Slow Writing, which I have yet to read and Metzger’s Writing For Your Life, which has this gorgeous passage:

A poem is a penetration into the essence of something. It begins in a moment, is the thing itself as well as the surrounding space. A poem is in the spaces between the words.

 

This draws me back to the work of poet Susan Rich, whose collection Cloud Pharmacy was gifted to me by The Next Best Book Club (TNBBC) and very enthusiastically discussed on Goodreads recently.

I fell in love with her suite of poems on the surrealist photographs of Hannah Maynard.  So very fascinated by her way of entering into the work, which she describes in detail in her  “Statement of Poetic Research,”  available with some of the work at Common-Place.

I’m thinking of trying something similar with the “colonialized” images of Tlingit women at the Univ. of Washington, The Alaska Digital Archives and Penn Museum.  This would slide in nicely with the suite of Tlingit legend poems I am already working on.

I’ve made a stab towards it with this Work in Progress piece:

 

Teller

I planted myself
in its heart

I grew inside
the story

marrow of history
backbone of myth

body of taboo, image, desire

what a fucking terrifying solid
being

of communal dream

almost too much oneness for one
mother

nevertheless, die to the fictive selves
so that the “real” voice emerges

 

But I’m not sure exactly where I’m going with the project yet.  I find myself (along with my very patient sponsor/mentor) wishing that I could write much, much faster.  This has been a project of long brewing and constant re-immersion in a culture I am somewhat isolated from both generationally and geographically.

Yet, I am finding it very rewarding.   I have hopes of making it to Alaska if Grandpa Kashka’s health improves.   At 87, he clings tenaciously to the Florida sunshine, but my uncles and cousins are still shucking a living from the rocks.

Thank God we all know how to speak the language of the earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2sDay Poems: The Delicate Brushstrokes of Poet-Artist Ruth Bavetta

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2sDay Poems, ekphrastic poems, Embers on the Stairs, Fugitive Pigments, Future Cycle Press, Memories Suspended by Filaments, Moontide Press, poet-artists, Ruth Bavetta, Visual poetry, women poets, Women's Poetry List-Serv

Ruth Bavetta is a widely published poet and a talented artist whose work is infused with a powerful starlight. I first ran across her work through the Women’s Poetry List-Serv (WOM-PO) and fell hard for her visual poems. Our first selection, “The End and the Aim”, is one such example.

Find more lovely pieces in the visual poetry section of her website.

But beyond those eye-catching beauties is a whole body of work that is more traditional but as equally captivating. At least, in the fine way that the painter’s delicate brushstrokes are woven into its words.

Fugitive Pigments (from Future Cycle), a gorgeous collection of Ruth’s ekphrastic poems, is not surprisingly my favorite of her current publications. Our next selection is one of Ruth’s favorites from the book:

Memories Suspended by Filaments

                                              –in the voice of Joseph Cornell

The house is small, but it has room for dreams.

For birds, books, stamps, stars, marbles, butterflies,

balls, dolls, my brother Robert, maps, romance,

playing cards, lace, lobsters, small sticky hope.

Eyes down, I walk the streets of Manhattan,

eat pastries, sweet, stale, talk to pigeons, find

orphaned desires in gutters, in dime stores,

in second-hand shops with dusty windows.

I discover, gather, magpie away.

My treasures hibernate waiting, sleeping

in basement shelf rows, labeled by heartbeats

slowed to a drip. When my dossiers have lived

together long enough, I take them out,

let them speak, cherish them in my boxes,

where parrots talk of sunsets, and clay pipes

float and fill with a summer of bubbles.

Behind glass, my birds and my women sing,

locked into universes I create,

where lovers are dancers, princesses, queens,

secrets detained in shining glass bottles.

I sing the juene fille Lauren Bacall,

slender Botticelli, silent in blue,

construct a pink palace with sapphire stars.

I mediate history for the Prince

of the Medici, give him a compass

so he finds and he follows true love. Oh,

Bebe Marie, you are so beautiful,

pale pink, hidden among silvery twigs.

Also available for your enjoyment is Embers on the Stairs (from MoonTide Press), her second collection. A third book, No Longer at This Address is on its way later this year.  Can’t wait to snatch that one up!

 

 

 

**Readers, have your own favorite poet-artists? Please share your recommendations.  One can never have too much poetry in this life, somebody once said. Picasso? Or maybe Naomi Shihab Nye.  Post your thoughts on that too.  Looking forward to hearing from you!!

A Foremother Friday Trio

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A Writer's Life, Adrienne Rich, Any Other Name, Deal Me In Reading Challenge, Deborah Eisenberg, Electric Literature tumblr, Ellen Moody, Foremother Friday, Free Comic Book Day, From the Women's Canon, Muriel Rukeyser, NPR interview, Reading the Short Story blog, Ron Hogan, Short Story Month, The Millions, Twilight of the Superheroes, Women's Poetry List-Serv

The New Novel (1877) by Winslow Homer

For those of you following the blog, you’ll remember that I mentioned the Women’s Poetry List-Serv as the inspiration for “Foremother Fridays”.  The wonderful Ellen Moody started the practice there and has put together an extensive library of archived postings at the dedicated website, From the Women’s Canon: Foremother Poets.

I’d like to refer you to two of her write-ups in lieu of an original poetry posting, and then we will move on to a foremother of the short story form.

                                      

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)                     Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

 

For fans of the comic genre, tomorrow is a big day with free giveaways and a smorgasbord of activities at independent comic stores all over the country. While Deborah Eisenberg doesn’t really dabble in the genre, her short story collection, Twilight of the Superheroes takes some of the sheen off the superhero ideal and has a rocking comic-esque cover.  The collection won the PEN/Faulkner award in 2007 and revolves around a cast of the confused and hurting in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. Just the kind of dark, gritty thing for a bright May weekend!

But if you’d rather not shell out the funds for the book, you can read her story, “Your Duck is My Duck,” at the Electric Literature Recommended Reading Tumblr or  “The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor” at the NPR archives. And do check out her Art of Fiction (no.218) interview with Catherine Steindler (of the Paris Review), as well as the A Writer’s Life piece at the Telegraph and the Beatrice interview with Rob Hogan for more on her views about short fiction and the writing process.

And last but not least, find out more about her life and views on society and justice at The Millions’ Reality Squared profile.

Then if you’re still looking to round out your Deal Me In Playlist, consult Reading the Short Story blog’s favorite collections for ideas on where to glean.

 

 

Poems with Presence: A Brief Note on the Late Elizabeth Bartlett

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Bloodaxe Books, British Women's Poetry, damaged Britian, Elizabeth Bartlett, Foremother Friday, poems with presence, Surgery, The Visitors, Two Women Dancing, women's poetry, Women's Poetry List-Serv

British poet, Elizabeth Bartlett, passed away in 2008 at the age of 84. Her first collection appeared when she was well into her 50’s and drew high praise for her skill in evoking the lives and faces of the ordinary people she ran across in her work with the National Health Services.  Critic Adam Thorpe, described her as “a kind of weird cross between Anne Sexton and Philip Larkin,” and editor Peter Forbes called her a chronicler of “damaged Britain”.

Each of her poems has a very physical presence that any student of poetry would do well to examine. “The Visitors,” written about a patient who suffered from hallucinations, is perhaps one of her best examples.  Find both the text and a lovely sound file of the poet reading at The Poetry Archive.

Listen to it several times and then skip on over to the Poetry Book Society (UK) and read her more tender “Surgery,” which with its deep vein of emotion opens Bartlett’s work up to even those that would snub poetry.

If you do not already own one of her collections, I suggest you start with Two Women Dancing (Bloodaxe), which is perhaps my favorite sampling, as it touches on broader issues as well as her own motherhood and marriage.

*If you’d like to explore more great women’s poetry, visit the Women’s Poetry List-Serv and search for “Foremother Friday”.

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Land of Fairy Tales

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Deathless Press, Enchanted Conversations, fairy tale genre, Fairy Tale Papers, fairy tale poetry, Goblin Fruit, Journal of Mythic Arts, New Fairy Tales, Papaveria, Red Rose Review, SurLaLune, Terri Windling, The Crafty Poet, The Fairy Tale Review, Tolkien, Unsettling Wonder, Women's Poetry List-Serv

There’s an old Jewish folk saying that counsels one not to ask questions of fairy tales. Tolkien was of a similar opinion.

On the other hand, Terri Windling, in the introduction to Snow White, Blood Red, tells us that “the fairy tale journey may look like an outward trek across plains and mountains, through castles and forests, but the actual movement is inward, into the lands of the soul.”

It is perhaps a bit of both questioning and not questioning that makes the genre so enchanting and durable.  Modern writers continue to add to the pool of story. And poets, in specific, seem to favor the form.

For a sampling of such fairy tale-themed poetry, visit The Journal of Mythic Arts.  Besides poems by such names as Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood, they have a helpful reading list (with links to the actual collections) in the right sidebar.

And for some beauties from Anne Sexton’s Transformations collection go to AllPoetry [you have to click through to the others in the bottom right sidebar]. Also check out her often-taught Snow White poem.

Then read Plath’s Cinderella, and Fairy Tale Logic by A.E. Stallings. You might like Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s The Mermaid in the Hospital as well.

Then there is the MUST-READ, always lovely, Goblin Fruit, an online magazine with much to offer. [I gave you a few of the more “wicked” poems from their archives in the Halloween post].

You’ll also want to visit Rose Red Review (the sideways girl for is their logo). Some of the ladies from the Women’s Poetry List-Serv have been published here, including Diane Lockward, who just came out with The Crafty Poet, which you absolutely want a copy of. Buy a few, give as a gift.

Other magazines with fairy tale poetry include: The Fairy Tale Review, Unsettling Wonder, Enchanted Conversation, and New Fairy Tales.

For fairy tale chapbooks, check out Papaveria and Deathless Press.  And if you’re on twitter, be sure to follow @SurLaLuneHeidi and @FairytalePapers for good feeds about the genre.