A Real Writer Now?
I finally remembered to check and see if I made it (after all these years) into the Poets and Writers directory and, lo and behold, here I am a Listed Writer.
September 24, 2007
September 17, 2007
Book Girl!
Exciting news: my poetry chapbook, The Hours of Us, is now available for ordering on the Finishing Line Press web site. I've seen the post card PDF, proofread the copy, and had a sneak preview of the cover. The bolt photograph from Venice is the one the editors chose for the cover. And I don't look too wretchedly old in my author photo on the post card. I could get used to this—actual recognition for all that hard work, the laboring over syllable, sound, word, line, stanza. The expert reading eyes of B. and L. are the only reason the pieces are any way as good as they are: major thanks go to them. So celebration eve here in this countdown of last days in the house in the woods. I take down the Jabberwocky oil done by G. in 8th grade (can't forget to move that painting), inadvertently tap it to my wine glass and, voila, a hairline crack. Fitting. Subject, muse, and even in that, the flaw revealed.
Terrence Blanchard's extended musical meditation on Hurricane Katrina is playing now. Says it all...
April 06, 2007
Electronic Counts, Too!
On Monday, April 9th, my poem, The Cat Lady is to be featured on Grassroots Bookstore's Poem-A-Day e-mail and web site, their offering for National Poetry Month. I was pleased because the project editor liked its truth-telling and, given the subject matter, that came as a surprise.
The Cat Lady
The woman next door says she’s clairvoyant.
She hasn’t had a night’s peace in years.
You want to ask her who it was
who found his body,
how long he was left hanging
but you stare instead
beyond to the leaf pile under the tree.
She fiddles with her buttons. You could
tarry for hours and still not be privy to where
his ashes were scattered or who got to keep the cars.
Time to assemble your gratitude and move on.
As if proxy for revelations, she offers
a painted cat she pulls from her pocket.
Once his, she says, brushing away lint.
She’ll go back into her house,
spoon food onto saucers for the cats,
nameless because they come and they go,
something she’s already told you,
something you already know.
Recognition!
Some mornings, it is a good idea to check e-mail. This morning, unexpectedly, a message arrived from M.E. Hope, the chair of the Oregon State Poetry Association's Spring 2007 contest informing me I'd won an Honorable Mention in the Members Only category for my poem, "Leda Before the Swan." This is the category that requires a poem of six to twelve lines, no more, no less but it can be any form and on any subject. Maybe this poem appeals because it is a bit of a poet's poem, an homage to William Butler Yeats' classic, Leda and the Swan, long a favorite of mine in spite of its subject matter: Zeus appearing to Leda as a swan and then raping her.
Below is my offering on the subject:
Leda Before the Swan
Before his shuddering fall into her arms,
his wings thrusting, their edgy caress,
she saw not the feathers, not the Olympian swagger,
but bathtubs and goat skins, her husband’s nightly pursuit.
Later, she’ll say that’s why she didn’t hear
the whirr, the dizzy miles he soared across the Aegean.
She was singing herself a song and threading
her braid into a coil at the nape of her neck.
She dabbed attar on wrists, weighty with their bangles,
and settled into the hammock for her afternoon nap.