Waving Good-bye to 2011 - And Looking Forward to 2012

A warm good-bye to 2011

In Life It's Not Where You Go, It's Who You Travel With (Thanks, Mitch)

In Life, It's Not Where You Go, It's Who You Travel With 

Some of my favorite things: poems, book arts, and mystery

The Prague Municipal Library

What is it about towers of books? Or really, any art objects made from books? A few months ago I posted about the gorgeous book sculptures that were showing up in Edinburgh libraries and other municipal buildings. There seems a magic to them that goes beyond repurposing pages and bindings. As if the new book object makes manifest the imagination in a new way.  You can see more of the Edinburgh sculptures here.

"This is for you" The Banksy of the book world has left these lyrical sculptures all over Edinburgh

The Prague Municipal Library is now home to a spiraling tower of hundreds of carefully stacked books assembled by Slovakian born artist Matej Kren. Dubbed Idiom, the staggering installation reaches up to the ceiling, and Kren installed a mirror inside the funnel to create the illusion of a magical, unending spire of books.


Another story that made me glad I'm alive today is the npr piece about the harried parent who has decided to read a poem a day. In the kitchen by the toaster, in the car, even in the port-a-john this parent has found peace by spending a minute each day being transported by poetry. What would the world look like if we all did this? Maybe even for one day?

A Poem A Day: Portable, Peaceful And Perfect

by ALAN HEATHCOCK

EnlargeiStockphoto.com

December 26, 2011

Alan Heathcock is the author of Volt.

I hadn't slept well, had to get my three kids to three different schools in three different cities, had deadlines piled on deadlines. I leaned my head against my bookcases and there, at eye-level, was a book of poetry by Mary Oliver.

I randomly opened to the poem "Egrets." Like magic, I was pushing through catbrier to the edge of a pond, where I watched "a spindle of bleached reeds" become egrets and "unruffled, sure, by the laws of their faith not logic, they opened their wings softly and stepped over every dark thing."

I closed the book, transformed, bolstered from the inside out.

May you enjoy these images and ideas --- and hopefully they will spark ideas in me or in you that are  practical, transformative, and magical as well. Happy December 28th


Read more: Matej Kren's 'Idiom' Is a Spellbinding Tower Made From Hundreds of Books | 

Happy Everything to Everyone!

Is it a film? A flock of birds? An animated painting?

My favorite piece in the current exhibit, "Luminous"
Tonight I found a youtube video of this amazing art installation which is part film, part sculpture, part magic. It seems right to post it here tonight in this season where so many people yearn for something luminous. I watched this piece over and over with a kind of wonder I hadn't felt since a child needing to see it just one more time... This video gives a real sense  of the piece. May it bring you a few moments of wonder tonight.

"Suh's installation, titled Gate, was commissioned exclusively for this exhibition and transforms one of the artist's existing fabric pieces into a screen for projection as well as a space of transition.

"Like the moment of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism, passing through a gate takes only a split second, and then it's over," Suh explains. "But so many things happen in such a short period of time. With this work, I wanted to extend that moment of passage, to delay it, if only for an instant, to provide the viewer that moment of insight."

"Our notion of emptiness is quite different in the East," Suh explains. "The void is not empty or bleak but charged with meaning."

Thank you California Journal of Poetics - The Alchemist's Kitchen Reviewed

Giving Thanks to the California Journal of Poetics Tonight!

   It's been a long day of putting words on paper and then scratching them out again. Sometimes, and this is true more and more the last few years, it feels impossible to write poems that I am really proud of. Maybe it's that I live in a constant state of self doubt and the more years on the planet, the more time those doubts have to coalesce.

Don't get me wrong, I also believe that any good writer needs self doubt in order to improve - sometimes I just wish that the voice that taunts "so you think that's a poem?" might take a bit of a holiday. 

Let me also thank Carrie MONIZ who I have never met for her thoughtful and spot on reading of my work. Reviewing poetry is an act of generosity and I am thankful for my book falling into such kind hands. And if you are still looking for a holiday gift for yourself or a poetry loving friend, you can order The Alchemist's Kitchen from my website where I will add in Cures Include Travel if you purchase The Alchemist's Kitchen before December 31.

Here is the beginning of the review. To read the entire peace click here

The beauty and musicality of the English language cannot be overlooked in Susan Rich’s third book, The Alchemist’s Kitchen(a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year). She invents new forms and reinvents the tried and true, exploring every device and tool with a keen ear and deft tongue.

Rich has an incredible ability to articulate the essence of a moment or emotion in few words—especially through the use of striking similes and metaphors. In the poem, “The Never Born Comes of Age,” the slow pace of time is described as “hours / hunched like dogs no one could move.” This image alone, in the context of the poem (a mother mourning her pregnancy which ambiguously ends in “loss streaming across cow dung and thistle”), is enough to make the reader grow heavy with the speaker’s emotional burden—the heartache felt by an “almost mother.”

Mahmoud Darwish
photo from the Palestine Monitor

In “Re-Imagining My Life with Lions,” which meditates on the epigraph by Mahmoud Darwish—“There is no death, only a change of worlds”—the speaker reveals that he or she “want[s] to live another life—a poplar tree in a row / of blue pine along a cobbled road,” though it isn’t for lack of beauty in this world. The lines, “Each day unfurls, fragrant / as a botanist’s notes from the road,” are so saturated with the enduring passion one has for the world—the lingering scent, the cataloguing and acute observations—that only one sensitive to life’s ephemeral nature could articulate such a comparison. The speaker’s desire to live another life does not evoke thoughts of pity or disparity. Rather, it continues to evoke To continue reading click here

There's a Certain Slant of Light

December 21, 2011

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.  


           Emily Dickinson

Happy Festival of Light! Happy Hanukah!

The Coming of Light
by Mark Strand
Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

I Am Not A Brave Woman: As Travelers, We Spin Ourselves Around the Globe

Lavinia Spalding does a superb job as editor for 2011 and is gearing up for 2012!

I am thrilled and humbled to have my interview up at Lavinia Spalding's site where she is interviewing several contributors to The Best Women's Travel Writing 2011. Here is a bit of what I confessed about my life as a traveller...


And for the woman traveller in your life, this is THE book for her. Readings around the country and new interviews posted regularly are generating a great deal of interest in the anthology...


Through travel, have you overcome any fears or obstacles?

At heart, I think of myself as a shy worrier. However, when I mention this description to friends, they laugh at me. I’ve conducted human rights work in the West Bank and been an electoral supervisor in Bosnia. I’ve heard bullets whiz past my ears and spent an evening drinking tea with nomadic men on the edge of the Sahara. In South Africa, I lived alone in the country that statistically is known as the murder and rape capital of the world. It’s a mystery to me how these experiences started to accrue. And yet, they have and I’ve become braver for them.

As travelers, we spin ourselves around the globe with only a credit card and a passport for protection. And more often than not, the experiences that come to us are positive ones. In all of my decades of travel, I can think of only one time when things were actually dangerous (and it wasn’t in a war zone). So yes, travel has allowed me to privilege curiosity over fear, adventure over worry. I can’t imagine who I would be without my years of traveling to and living in different countries. So although I still worry about having to ask a stranger for directions and I still obsess about keeping my travel documents safe; I now know the joy of travel so far outweighs the problems.  


What advice can you give to women who want to start traveling?

Do it. Don’t let the voice inside your head dictate or limit your life experiences. Whenever I go somewhere I make sure that there are places or people where I can land. Plan to do more than sightsee. As a writer, these places are often writing retreats or visiting writer friends, but that’s only one way to go. If there is a painting you’ve always wanted to see, you could create a trip around visiting that painting-- or perhaps there is a famous restaurant in Spain you’ve always wanted to try. We live our lives only once. One. That’s not a very big number. I’d hate to miss anything because of my own self-imposed fears.

I am not a brave woman, but I have had travel experiences that have taught me to be braver. The challenges I’ve overcome as a traveler have translated into the skills I need to live my everyday life.


     To continue reading click here.

Poets on the Coast: A Gift for the Poet in Your Life

Here's a personal, creative, and waterview gift idea. Treat someone you love to a writing retreat of a lifetime. We are offering a special pre-registration Poets on the Coast gift certificate for the first time this year. 

A view from the Sylvia Beach Hotel

If you sign up now before midnight December 31st for a holiday registration for Poets on the Coast (September 7-9, 2012) you will receive a personalized 8 1/2 x 11 certificate entitling the gift recipient (which could be you) to a special registration including a one on one session with a workshop leader, writing workshops, yoga, and more. Only $273 for a three day event. 


In this crazy world we live in what better gift to give than three days of poetry and peace? This retreat is designed for women poets of all levels. To find out more click here. Feel free to leave questions here in the comment box or poetsonthecoast(at)yahoo.com


And from last year's participants: 

"I am overwhelmed with gratitude and energy derived from these last 48 hours.  The shared writing culture, thought thoughtful and organized prep, the generosity you've shown with your time, wisdom, humor, and encouragement -- Wow!  Thank you.  I leave this afternoon with head and heart filled with new material and determination.  Thank you again for your inspiration."

Kay 

"How can I thank you....let me count the ways!"
What a wonderful weekend.  I've come home feeling so enriched by people (you two, in particular) and by the poetry and discussions and sharing.  I'm raring to go to put my "action plan" into gear.  You have created something truly remarkable and wonderful.

Sylvia

Spaces are limited and we already have some poets from last year joining us again. Please click here to register with this special limited gift offer. Registration includes a one year subscription to the Crab Creek Review.

More questions? Click here for Frequently Asked Questions!

Remember, sign- up before December 31st for this holiday gift special.

What Can I Say?

There is a distinct parallel between writing papers and grading them.

That May Be the Measure of Our Lives

Toni Morrison

"We die. That may be the meaning of live. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives." 

                                                                     ~Toni Morrison

The Bluest Skies You've Ever Seen in Seattle ...

That was the song from "Here Come the Brides" a weird and cheesy television show from the 1970's and my first concept of this city far out west. In reality the "brides" coming west to keep the loggers company were often prostitutes ... but that's a different story. All of this is merely preamble to these Seattle skies. Happy Monday!

Gifts for the Poet in Your Life - And Donations to a Poetry Press

Please check out the signed first editions and full series collections at White Pine Press. Dennis Maloney is selling off his collection of signed books, broadsides, and first editions from a variety of poets including Pablo Neruda, Grace Paley, Mary Oliver, Sandra Cisneros, Ernesto Cardinal, Fedrico Garcia Lorca, Linda Gregg, Charles Simic, and many more. The prices are extremely reasonable. 


This year I am doing my best to buy holiday gifts locally and to support causes that I believe in. As a poet who has benefited from over a decade with the same intelligent, ethical, and big hearted publisher, I strongly recommend doing your holiday shopping with White Pine Press.

Certainly it doesn't hurt to take a look right here.

See "Luminous" at the Seattle Art Museum

Photo by Kelli Russel Agodon (poet and photographer)

We sat and watched this film (although film might not be the correct word) all the way through three times. It's hard to explain all the different images that fade in and out, that walk across the screen, that are drawn on the thin white gauze as if on a canvas. The deer in the left foreground walks, leaps, disappears, and reappears all in different movements. Night turns to dawn and Chinese cryptograms appear on the backs of butterflies, crows fly and ---- well you really need to see this for yourself. I didn't read anything about the artist or the form. I confess I wanted unadulterated magic.

Do Tell! Call for Submissions for New Project!

Gay Life in Prague

Wonderful poets Peter Pereira and Jourdan Keith join forces for a special edition of Floating Bridge Review to focus on the theme of "Do Tell" that touches on gay life. Note: anyone who writes on this subject is welcome to contribute!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Floating Bridge Press seeks poetry submissions for our upcoming publication Floating Bridge Review #5 on the theme of “Do Tell” — works that touch on gay life (including lesbian, bi, trans, two-spirit, questioning, and any other non-straight orientations). We are seeking work that is inspired, surprising, humorous, intriguing, and/or just plain excellent writing. There are no restrictions on form or subject matter. Prose poems and flash fiction will also be considered. Poets of all persuasions are welcome and encouraged to submit. 

Entries are by e-mail only: Send up to 5 poems as a single Microsoft Word document or single PDF file by February 15, 2012 to floatingbridgepress@yahoo.com. Please put FBR5 SUBMISSION in the Subject line of your e-mail.

Terrance Hayes reads at SAL this Thursday and Teaches on Friday

Terrance Hayes visits Seattle this week

Terrance Hayes is constantly pushing toward new possibilities for private inquiry and new structures against which to ballast his buoyant and boundless sense of language. These poems marry swank and swagger to what I like to think of as a 21st Century gravitas. —Tracy K. Smith


God is an American

I still love words. When we make love in the morning,
your skin damp from a shower, the day calms.
Shadenfreude may be the best way to name the covering
of adulthood, the powdered sugar on a black shirt. I am

alone now on the top floor pulled by obsession, the ink
on my fingers. And sometimes it is a difficult name.
Sometimes it is like the world before America, the kin-
ship of fools and hunters, the children, the dazed dream

of mothers with no style. A word can be the boot print
in a square of fresh cement and the glaze of morning.
Your response to my kiss is I have a cavity. I am in
love with incompletion. I am clinging to your moorings.

Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. It survives
alright. It aches like an open book. It makes it difficult to live.

Are You Interested in Brazil? In Hip-Hop? In Helping Two Young Women Filmmakers and Dancers?

One last call today for my favorite project of the moment "Believe the Beat" produced by Jocelyn Edelstein whom I had the pleasure to meet through the anthology Best Women's Travel Writing.

Jocelyn graduated from Western Washington University and was honored with a grant to go traveling somewhere in the world to pursue her dreams. Edelstein majored in Dance and so decided to head to Brazil. There she met young and creative hip-hop dancers whom were forming troupes and trying to dance themselves into a better life.

This documentary film showing off the dancers, of Brazil, and even of Croatia where one dancer ends up, needs to be made. Why not make a donation today in the name of hip-hop dancer you know? My donation was my chance to be part of the dance and the film worlds -- and I get invited to the after party when the movie premieres. You know that will be one wild dance party!


PS If you want to donate (you can even donate a $1) you need to do so by Sunday! The time is now.

The Gardenia - Thanks to Billie and Cornelius Eady

The Gardenia by Cornelius Eady The trouble is, you can never take That flower from Billie's hair. She is always walking too fast and try as we might, there's no talking her into slowing. Don't go down into that basement, we'd like to scream. What will it take to bargain her blues, To retire that term when it comes to her? But the grain and the cigarettes, the narcs and the fancy-dressed boys, the sediment in her throat. That's the soil those petals spring from, Like a fist, if a fist could sing.

Hurray for Occupoety - "American History"

Gees Bend Quilt - House

Today I'm officially an Occupoet. The sight Occupoetry is run by folks at UC Davis and I'm really happy to have "American History" up today.

Here are the first few lines --



American History


Someday soon I'll be saying at school


there were chalkboards, at school
we read books made of paper, 


we drank milk from small cartons. We drew.
At school we liked children unlike us


studied evolution, enjoyed recess, plenty of food.


At school we made globes of papier-mache,
built solar systems democratized in sugar cubes.


click here to finish reading "American History" at the Occupoetry site ..

Happy Birthday William Blake! Visual artist, poet, thinker...

"Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow."
William Blake

And for just a little more information ...

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".^[1] His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".^[2] Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham^[3] he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God",^[4] or "Human existence itself".^[5]

Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic",^[6] for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England - indeed, to all forms of organised religion - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions,^[7] as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg.^[8]

Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify.

Poems of Thanks and Praise for You - Escape into Life

Thanks to Kathleen Kirk for inviting me to be part of Escape into Life's Thanksgiving Edition. Four beautiful poems with beautiful art work are included. Click here to read poems by Robert Lee Brewer, Maureen Doallas, Richard Jones, and me.

The art work here is from a previous issue of Escape into Life by Weibes Rauchen.

May you spend this holiday with people you love --- or at least people you like a whole lot.

Poetry and Cartography: The Center for Geospatial Poetry; Another First for Washington State

I love it when my different obsessions converge. Not only is there a website where poetry and maps shack up together, but they are doing it for free. If you click here and then go to "A Sense of Place" and wait for the page to load, you will have the first of its kind -  a Google poetry map of Washington State -- or any state that I'm aware of. Hover the cursor over the region of Washington State you want to read poems about and be rewarded with poems by Elizabeth Austen, Ann Teplick, Oliver de la Paz, Dan Peters, and Peter Pereira to name but a few great state poets.

My friend Katharine Whitcomb (superb poet)  and her friend, Bob Hickey (real cartographer) have collaborated to create a map of Washington State on google maps and they've also curated a wonderful anthology of poems on place. If you search the sample poems on the left hand side of the map you will find poems about White Swan, WA (Allen Braden), Richland, WA (Kathleen Flenniken) and Seattle's Museum of Flight (Susan Rich).

Creative projects that emerge from unusual collaborations make me incredibly happy. The world of poetry becomes rooted in the particular coordinates of place and in turn, cartography becomes a thing of art. Katharine Whitcomb is a genius of collaboration having worked this summer with an artist in San Diego to create miniature poems for new museum "scents." (More on this soon).

In the meantime I would love to hear about other artistic collaborations between poets and others. I'm on the lookout for something brand new. Thank you Kathy and Bob for making this project available.http://www.katharinewhitcomb.com/geospatial.html

Turkey anyone? No not the bird!

This is my idea of beauty I wish I could justify taking Spring Quarter off and visiting Turkey to write in cafes, visit  the Blue Mosque, and walk through market streets. However, unless I win the lottery or marry a  millionaire before May, it might not be in the cards for me. At least not this year. My  friend Sheila Bender is co-leading a writing group to Istanbul and she still has a few  spots left. The trip is ideal for prose writers and poets alike because Sheila is both a  published poet and prose writer. Read below and then click on more information.  And really, why not go to Turkey this May? You know you want to!

Writing Istanbul Writers' Conference May 11-15, 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey with Sheila Bender, Yeşim Cimcoz and Susan Bono Optional 3-Day Trip Extension to Ephesus May 16-19 Susan Bono, editor of Tiny Lights, and Sheila Bender, publisher of Writing It Real, are joining Yesim Cimcoz of the Writing Istanbul Project in guiding poets and writers of personal experience in writing and touring the amazing city of Istanbul. We have an optional add-on trip following the workshop for those who want to see more of Turkey. Spouses, friends and partners are welcome to join us in activities surrounding our writing groups work. For Writing Istanbul, we have a fabulous residence in the old city to stay in, cafes to meet in, tours and in-city transportation arranged as well as help booking your room and airport pick up and drop off.  The three-day add-on trip will be a wonderful customized tour  easy to book. During our time in Istanbul, we'll be touring, writing, and meeting together, in groups led by our three instructors and aided by Turkish members of the Writing Istanbul project. We'll meet all together, too, for workshops, sharing writing, and learning about personal writing in Turkey. Some of our special activities include a whirling dervishes performance, a visit to a hamam (a Turkish bath), and a celebration dinner cruise down theBosphorus. Yesim, Susan and Sheila are very excited and hope you join us! For more information, click here! Kadikoy Market on the Asian Side Rug Bazaar Inside the Blue Mosque