Last light

I’ve never cared much for the hubalub of New Year’s Eve. The forced cheer wears me out. So, last week it was with vigor that I embraced a new sort of new year celebration.

A small group of us drove three hours south along the Oregon Coast to arrive at Cape Blanco — the most western point of the contiguous U.S — where we watched the sun set on 2008. In essence, we were the first to see the last sunset.

As the sun slipped in and out of a scattered winter haze, we sipped champagne, burned sage, sang songs, took photos, walked the lighthouse grounds, and recited bits of poetry and prose. It was the perfect marker of ends and beginnings -- and wonderfully free of false joy.

Cape Blanco on December 31 at 4:53pm

Drew Myron

On this last day
we stand on the edge of earth
and study the horizon for last light
From this western perch a rolling edge
swallows and surrounds

We spread our arms as the
smallest bird extends its wings
and despite its size
shoulders a trust that
hurts amassed will soften with time
that each day is fuller than the last
that everything flies and forgives

Wind presses memory
cups an ear to the thin wall of hope
answers every loud cry
every sudden turn
every call into the dark well
Says yes
maybe
wait

In this pale light
we peel the skin
of a new start
vow to say yes
quickly, kindly
We’ll talk less
listen more
feel the mark of every heart

As the sun sets
and a faint moon pulls
we dive into all we know
all we do not

all we forget
and forgive
all we hope
to love
to live

More than memory

We are more than what we remember; we are all that we have made.

— Inara Verzemnieks, reporter, writing about the handmade books by artist Shu-Ju Wang.

Shu-Ju Wang, a Portland, Oregon painter and printmaker spent the last year working with four senior citizen women in various stages of memory loss. Together, through conversation, painting, printmaking and collage, they chronicled their lives through artful, evocative artist books. Get the full story here.

Learn more about Shu-Ju Wang here.

Small, delicious poem pleasure

Sometimes I feel saturated. Too much stuff. Too many words.

Which is why I love Four and Twenty, a short form poetry journal. The journal — edited by Vinnie Kinsella of Declaration Editing in Vancouver, Washington — presents poems of 20 words or less, in four lines or less. Small nugget poems. Bite-size and delicious.

I have three poems in the current issue, including a Poem of the Week featured right now. Go to the website here, and download the handy-dandy PDF for your poetry reading pleasure.

New, Old, Forgotten and Found

Last month’s post calling for book suggestions delivered some great additions to my list. With the holiday break, I settled into some good reads, including these:

The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings.
Sharp writing and painfully real characters make this story shine. In her debut novel, Hemmings deftly creates a smart and endearing story of a father forced to wake up — and take charge of his two daughters — in the midst of his wife’s death. The book is now being adapted for film, so read it quick before airbrushed actors glam up the grit of true emotion.

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
I’m late to the party on this on this critically acclaimed and wildly popular book. Published in 2000 and later made into a movie (not to be confused with The Secret Life of Bees, an enjoyable book turned into a painfully sappy movie), Bee Season is snappy and sharp, and told in the voice of Eliza, a quirky 11-year-old pursuing the national spelling bee title.

Practicing for Heaven, by Julia B. Levine. I’ve waxed on about this contemporary California poet before but getting a Christmas gift of her early work reminds me that I can’t say enough about her ability to turn crisp pain into warm insight.

I didn’t want to like it, but I have to admit Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld is a good, engaging read. The story of a Massachusetts prep school initially made me groan. I mean, really, do we need another story of overindulged teens? But this story is smart, the characters are complex, and the book is a true page-turner. I read it in one sitting.

There are still a few days left in my self-declared and official Holiday Reading Season (wherein participants are allowed and encouraged to further the sport of reading by lazing about for hours, absorbed in books). I hope to enjoy — and in some cases, revisit — these books, too:

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson was suggested by reader Beth. Critics have hailed this book as brilliant, multi-layered and spiritually contemplative.

Just After Sunset by Stephen King
I’m a hit-and-miss fan but King’s new short story collection has garnered great reviews, and I’m eager for some bite-size reading. He’s so darn prolific (he’s written over 40 books) that over the years he’s gone beyond his trademark horror to offer a bit of something for everyone. My favorites are On Writing, a blend of memoir and manual, and Hearts in Atlantis, five thematically linked short stories set during the Vietnam War.

Unless by Carol Shields
Reader Auburn McCanta shared my enthusiasm for The Stone Diaries and couldn’t wait to read more of Shield’s work. Sadly, the author died of breast cancer in 2003. Unless, published in 2002, was her last novel. While she left us 10 novels, three short story collections and three volumes of poetry, I’m still hungering for more.

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Anything by this quick-witted writer is worth reading. She’s smart, tight and wry.

What’s on your library list? On your desk? By your bed? What's got you glued? I'd love to hear from you.

Poetry is back!

Thank you, Barack Obama, for bringing back the art of words. President-elect Obama has selected Elizabeth Alexander to compose and read a poem for his inauguration on Jan. 20.

Alexander will be only the fourth poet to be featured at a presidential inauguration. Robert Frost read at John F. Kennedy’s in 1961; Maya Angelou and Miller Williams read at Clinton’s in 1993 and 1997.

Alexander is an award-winning poet and professor at Yale University. She has written four books of poetry and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 for her collection American Sublime. Last year, she won the $50,000 Jackson Poetry Prize.

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Elizabeth Alexander

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”)
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?