Stationery
The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
Write to me.
You've heard me chatter about my work with Seashore Family Literacy, the nonprofit organization for which I volunteer, lead writing groups, create marketing materials . . .
Well, if you'll indulge me once more, I'm giddy with a wave of serendipity and want to share it with you. Just this week:
• Senitila McKinley, Seashore's founder/director, was featured in the Portland Oregonian.
Go here to read the story about our very own 'Mother Teresa.' (With thanks to writer Lori Tobias and photographer Faith Cathcart).
• We launched the Seashore website, packed with photos, news and events. (With thanks to my longtime friend and colleague Tracy Weil, of Weilworks, for another great word-art-design collaboration) Go here.
• We joined Facebook. Be our 'friend', 'fan' or just take a gander for grins. Go here.
Too many writers? Feeling overwhelmed and small?
Tim Green, editor of Rattle, offers encouragement for those dark days of despair:
"The definition of a great poem is really simple: Poems that have the power to effect the lives of some of the people who read them. Every poem we publish doesn’t have to be memorable and moving for everyone — but it has to be memorable or moving for someone, some kind of person who represents a subset of our readership . . . "
Read more here.
A bounty of books has left me, once again, scattered and satisifed. Rain, shine, winter, spring, I've always an excuse to curl up and read. This week I've devoured an unusual mix:
• Killshot, by Elmore Leonard
Murder with a side of wry (a shout-out to Fred for suggesting this book)
• A Changed Man, by Francine Prose
A clever novel about a white supremacist turnabout.
I've recently discovered Prose (author of Golden Grove, Blue Angel) and am steadily making my way through all her fiction.
• Night of a Thousand Blossoms by Frank Gaspar
Lush, smart, prose-like poetry.
He's got great titles and beautifully orchestrated searches for truth. I love the opening line of this poem:
There Were Footsteps in the Garden
I can’t figure out the earth, everything saying yes and no
at the same time, everything shedding its hair and licking
its teeth and waiting to be eaten. And then there are the
great wings of the galaxies I’m looking at as they shudder
through the wilderness like spirits until they stoop through
my garden of lenses and mirrors. What is the loneliness
of all those shattered islands, what is so lofty, so hungry,
so intelligent, so needy about them? I’m reading in a holy
book about how the color red shifts and retreats in this
sidereal world, as though the stars are trying to hide
their forms from one another, as though they are afraid
of their nakedness─they all race away, and only the distance
grows, only the distraction, as if that were the point. Now
the yard is so quiet I can hear the snails being pulled
through the long grass by some reckless force beyond their
snail imagination. There are sayings now that would help me.
They would be nothing by daylight. The words try to avoid
embarrassment too. How can you blame them? But in
these pure hungers of the night it is another story. Precisely
another story, and then another and another. Oh, there were
footsteps in the Garden, all right. There was a firmament
hung with lights. But that was then. This is now. That’s what
makes me ask for the next story. That’s what makes me curl
in the blanket on the shivering grass and stare outward. That’s
what makes tonight so safe for this one thing I’m trying to say.
— Frank Gaspar, from Night of a Thousand Blossoms
From funerals to sports to valentines, it's been a good week for poetry.
Get poetry out of the books and into the world, is my frequent refrain. Poetry for the people, for the masses, for the everyday. This week, I was happy to see it happen:
• The Opening Ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games featured slam poet Shane Koyczan, who performed We Are More.
• Also at the Ceremonies, singer k.d. lang performed Hallelujah, a song by acclaimed poet-musician Leonard Cohen.
• I attended two funerals this week, and both included touching amounts of poetry. Though the services were full of sorrow, I was heartened by the healing power of words. Shared at our most tender and touching times — from weddings to wakes — poems awaken and soothe as we struggle to make sense of life's turns.
• For Valentine's Day I received several lovely cards filled with poetry. From Hallmark to handmade, I treasure them all.
Is poetry part of your every day? Tell me about it!
Monday, March 1, 2010 at 10:09AM