Emerging from the Cocoon: Sisters, Real and Imagined

I arrived two years ago for my first A Room of Her Own Foundation retreat in O’Keeffe’s desert without notes for the class I was responsible for teaching on blogging and a suitcase full of wedding clothes and heels due to a series of travel glitches; Why Every Wife Could Use Her Own Hmong Tribe (and a Thundershirt) chronicles that chapter of finger-pointing strain my marriage survived. When I snapped a photo of the silver mirror in my room at Ghost Ranch, I saw in it a variation of the Yin Yang necklace my husband gave me as we parted ways that day, his attempt at reconciliation.

How lovely, then, two years later, this year, still in the habit of chronic omen surfing, to find the image in my mirror to be one of an open door. How different to arrive with the suitcase I’d packed for the occasion. With all of my blogging and mask-making teaching materials. To know the venue. To trust the women of AROHO like family, to have a sturdy circle of amazing friends I'd kept in tight email, phone, and face-to-face orbit. To be coming “home” to my second home of red cliffs and incandescent blue sky by day, Perseid meteors by night. To have a roommate, a friend I’d come to love so deeply at the last retreat, a writing sister I can’t imagine having not known. Jockeying for toothpaste spitting space, up late in a fit of infectious giggling, helping one another winnow down our reading selections to the allotted three and five minute windows, goading one another to take ridiculously harrowing risks that paid off for us both internally and externally.

By day, the sobering beauty of each day’s Mind Stretches and presentations (AROHO’s retreat daily schedules offer so much), which provided the structure for heart and mind to align. A daily practice of sacred collaboration. Which I experienced both internally and externally. It meant hands on panels like Beyond the B*tch Session: A Candid Conversation About Writing and Motherhood…where the conversation strolled right past the usual complaints about how hard it is to get to one’s work…just the title, “beyond the b*tch session” poised presenters and listeners attending the panel to move out of dichotomy and into success narratives: this is how I mother and this is how I write (see below for a list of links to blog posts by panelists).

It meant stepping out of my comfort zone to attend a workshop taught by Nicole Galland and Nicelle Davis, Reading in Your Authentic Voice, knowing that I’ve battled shyness most of my life, knowing that I’d be reading poetry aloud at some point for the group, knowing that as a professional writer one has to keep working on shortcomings. I dawdled over breakfast, had a second cup of tea, but still made it there in time for a shape-shifting exercise: to choose an animal to inhabit...that best might represent my work. Locked in shyness, I chose a far corner of the room and opted to be a cocoon, in honor of one of my groups of poems (November Butterfly). I flattened myself guiltily on the cold floor of the Agape Center eye level with the feet of the rows and rows of wooden benches parked there.

 

Though successfully frozen and inanimate in my cocoon, I couldn't help but notice other braver animals roaming the room, becoming more fully themselves: a horse, stomping and snorting as she ran along the bench surfaces, an elephant trumpeting her trunk as she loped past.  I lay there feeling sluggish and inexpressive and slightly selfish holding still on the floor. But eventually, once the cold thoroughly permeated both shoulder blades and the portion of my spine touching the floor, I had the urge to rise to sitting, and in slow symmetry, raise both arms to the sky.

 

What pleasure to take one's time--to move slow, to anticipate the sun, to move wings up, then down. I forgot to notice the others and how much better they were at the exercise. My feet felt just right, mute, tandem, but providing a solid base for the wings to venture.

 

Flying home that Sunday, thinking back on the myriad conversations, I felt struck equally by the layers of inspiration we goad one another towards as well as a bit taken aback by the layers of doubt and insecurity I heard come out of the mouths of many of my fellow retreat goers (my voice in the mix). But then even that made sense: it seems when we converge in the desert and dare to align with our biggest visions for our writing lives, both dreams and opposing shadow appear. Both find voice, find ear here. 

 

And I wouldn't be where I am today in my own writing process without the loving mirror provided by the women at the retreats. In my experience, we end up shoulder to shoulder with our strengths and our vulnerabilities. Thus poised at the right place and time to help one another face the negations as they arise. Thank you AROHO.

 

Further reading and other fertile negotiations that arose from the retreat:

 

I was thrilled to solicit work for Mother Writer Mentor on behalf of writing mothers otherwise unable to get away to a writing retreat. These guest blog posts are from AROHO's amazing panel, Beyond the B*tch Session: A Candid Conversation about Motherhood and Writing:

Barbara Rockman: Mother Writer: Boon of the Parallel Journey, Mandy Alyss Brown, AROHO’s Tille Olsen fellow: Creator: Rejecting theMotherhood vs. Writing Dichotomy, Nicelle Davis: No Love is Singular: Confessions of a Poet Daughter

 

On the bus ride to AROHO, instead of sitting next to the illustrious Marlene Samuels (read the story of how we met at the first retreat, bonding mutually over a love for her mother's memoir), I sat behind her and my poet friend Lisa Rizzo (read here Lisa's beautiful poems we published at The Fertile Source, solicited many years prior to our synchronous "re-meeting"), I had the privilege of scanning Samuels forthcoming When Digitial Isn't Real: Fact Finding Offline for Serious Writers.

As a poet I can tend to favor the imagination over historical fact. Exposure to Marlene's book gave me pause when selecting poems to read at the retreat--I realized one poem mentioned "Cleopatra's sister"...a line I'd sort of tossed in to my poem without ever checking to see if Cleopatra in fact had a sister. I still read the line, held my breath and waited for Marlene to correct me, but as luck would have it, Cleopatra did have a sister in her life--at least a half sister. Here's my review of Marlene's book on Amazon.  

 

I am also thrilled to announce that my first poetry collection, November Butterfly, will be forthcoming from Saddle Road Press in 2014. I will be reading at AWP in Seattle and rubbing shoulders again with many AROHOites there. A tremendous joy and gift. I hope to see you there--to share and compare notes.

 Photos and Artwork:

are by the author (moi) with exception of the feathered wings. The image was taken by Robyn Beattie and appears in our photo montage for Amelia (poem forthcoming in November Butterfly). View the photo poem montage here (video and text of poem originally published at V's Place by E. Victoria Flynn).

 

 

 

 

 

Beginning Blogging: In Person, Coronado Adult Education

Putting down new roots in Coronado, California has meant looking for ways to meet the community of writers here. I'm looking forward to mixing and mingling with bloggers and writers through teaching a couple of sections of Beginning Blogging for Coronado Adult Education.

The first session starts already this coming Tuesday, August 27, and the next session begins October 29, 2013. I'd love to work with you in person or have you pass along the information to a friend living in the greater San Diego area.

Here's my course description (listed in the catalogue under Computer Education):

Beginning Blogging

This course offers beginning bloggers the chance to create material to launch a blog or to recalibrate an existing blog through completing a series of writing exercises and inventories. We look at blog platforms and blog technique; we will also preview the Web for examples. We create content, discuss image use, and refer to a checklist towards blog launch. Students will emerge with sample posts and a map in hand for how to proceed in the future. While students may bring laptops or ipads to class, I welcome writers and bloggers at all stages of comfort level with technology, so please also plan to bring a notebook and pencil to each class.

Here's the link to the catalogue: Coronado Adult Education/ROP Fall 2013 Schedule of Classes

Class runs Aug 27-Oct 22, 6-8 p.m.

Second Session runs Oct 29-Dec 17, 6-8 p.m.

Praise from former students (2011 to present):

Tania Pryputniewicz is a wonderful teacher! She creates a warm, stimulating, supportive environment for learning and sharing and offers thoughtful, detailed feedback on participants’ work. Her assignments are top-notch. Tania’s blogging class is the first online class I’ve ever taken, and it’s been 100% positive! I got a lot of great ideas for my blog and am motivated to launch it soon. I’ll study with Tania again and will recommend her classes to my friends.—Barbara

When I met Tania at A Room of Her Own Foundation's summer writing retreat, she encouraged me to start my own blog. So when I found out she was teaching an online blogging class through Story Circle Network, I jumped at the chance. I'm so glad I did. Tania's assignments were well designed and encouraged me to branch out as a writer. She also responded in depth to all assignments from the class participants. Even though everything was conducted online, I felt like I getting personal attention from my instructor. I also appreciated that Tania was open to students adjusting the assignments and timelines to our own very busy lives. It was a great experience, and I wouldn't hesitate to take another class taught by Tania. —Lisa

The instructor gave many resources and inspirations for the people who were in the course, all pursuing very different types of blogs. There was something for everyone. But most helpful of all was Tania's enthusiastic and helpful feedback, individualized for each of us. I am so glad to have this material in my blogging files. —Mary Ann P.

I loved Tania Pryputniewicz's class!!!!!!!!!!!! —Juliana L.

It was a terrific course and got my blog going. I don't think I would have had the wherewithal to get started without Tania Pryputniewicz's class. —Peggy C

Hadn't had a great prior experience with an online course I took. Tania Pryputniewicz was extremely well organized and the course was a wonderful surprise. It definitely exceeded ALL my expectations. I feel as though I really learning a great deal in a very logical way that also was very supportive. Tania's course is a must-take for anyone who either is considering creating a blog but is fantastically beneficial to those who already have one. The lessons are hierarchical, focused, and really helped me realize my mission in even just starting a blog. I'd highly recommend this class and even thought about taking it again! —Marlene S.

Hope to see you there!

Truth or Dare, Sculpture Gardens, and New Perhaps Maybes with Liz Brennan

Detail from Bryan Tedrick's Space Cowboy

Finally! Breaking a two month blog stall…and I’m blaming…summer. Summer with all three children at my side, diving into the pool or paddling away from me into the ocean. And one trip to ER for a concussion. Two 10ish-year-olds alone in the living room. A mattress from their sleepover standing on end, one party supine on floor beneath the mattress. Picture the second party launching off the couch and ricocheting his body off the mattress so it lands on top of the child on the floor. The result: “foamy” vision (my son's words), near loss of consciousness, temporary loss of memory regarding the events leading up to the near blackout.

Truth or dare? the doctor asks my son. Yes, he tells her, a piece of information he didn’t share voluntarily with me til now. She calmly informs him many children his age (and younger) have died from Truth or Dare, lists the most popular culprits (choking, inhaling toxic substances, drinking too much of just about any liquid). She places her hand over her solar plexus, reminds him to listen to his gut.

“If you are ever dared to do something either your mother or I would not think is a good idea, you just don’t do it. And you live. Ok?” commands the doctor. He nods. Then proceeds to fail the brain test she gives him. She puts him on a month-long activity restriction to mitigate second-blow trauma: no last week of junior life-guard camp, no competing in the championship, no reading, no homework (“why couldn’t this have happened during the school year,” he gripes), no texting, no video games, no chores, no contact sports, no surfing, no concentrating, you get it…

Add to the above a non-stop stream of neighborhood children ringing the doorbell--a blissful state of affairs for my children after so many years in the woods without a friend in a ten mile radius. A bit of a shock for hermit poet mom (yours truly) but the commotion, according to my husband, is good for me and keeps the long-term poetry brooding from taking too many Keatsian turns or any turns at all (for a zine that takes essays on your favorite poem that takes a turn, check out Voltage Poetry, edited by Kim Addonizio and Michael Theune). Anyway, I’m taking my turn next week when I head off to A Room of Her Own Foundation’s 2013 Ghost Ranch soiree where I’ll be teaching Transformative Blogging: Inquiry via Mask and soaking in the hours of presentations given by the 100 or so women writers attending the retreat.

Summer travels, too, contributed to the blogstall…A trip up north to the redwoods in late July replete with soul friends and the art/writing infusion I so much needed fills me with joy, starting in San Francisco with my brother and his wife, soaking in the art of their home (much of it my brother's). Cruising the book shelf, I find Cynthia Giles The Tarot: History, Mystery and Lore, which my sister-in-law kindly allows me to borrow. Understandably-- I hope--my blogging pace here at Feral Mom and at Transformative Blogging has slowed to a crawl…and with Giles book in hand, my heart turns towards 2014’s Transformative Blogging tentative focus on the tarot.

Thriving on the former home turf meant time with Liz Brennan, recording new movie readings of Perhaps Maybes outside in her garden, persevering despite a crossfire of sunbeams, the sweeping cries of a hawk, the nefarious grinding of several of her landlord’s gravel trucks creeping up the driveway. We switched places and shed sweaters to make it appear as if we’d recorded on different occasions, making the most of our time together with cold peach teas and hot blackberry cobbler Liz topped off with ice cream. The fruit of our labors:

Translation (with sunbeams)


The Guest (with hawk) 

I even wrangled in a quick porch chat with my sculptor friend Sandy, her upcoming trip to Italy threading its way through our conversation. Thanks to my bootlegged Cynthia Giles—which mentions Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tuscany based sculpture garden of tarot—I have a future trip to Italy to plan towards. My father and his wife (my micro-movie collaborator Robyn) took us to the local sculpture gardens of Paradise Ridge Winery…where we reveled in the sunlight pouring its shadows through the massive metal lace cowboy hat of Bryan Tedrick,  and Bruce Johnson's beautiful bee tribute, Five Elements.

I was sad to find the Poetry House missing (due to vandalism), remembering a visit six years prior in which I carried my seven month old son on my hip through the tiny tea-house like structure. This visit, we lingered til the kids grew hot and cranky, tangling for a coveted seat on the bottom leg of the three-dimensional letter E of the LOVE sculpture (Laura Kimpton & Jeff Schomberg), each letter comprised of beautifully rusting sheets of metal punctured with rows and rows of bird-shaped cutouts...through which you can see birds flying away on the reverse side. Robyn took much better photos, but here's one of mine.

And one early morning, my husband and I parceled out the kids, rose and slid the kayaks into the Russian River, gliding through the faint wisps of morning fog, the pale grey trunks topped with lone turtles, the dusty blue of a Grey Heron watching us approach and pass, passing as part of his world, proving we all belong by not flying away. The water so still I watch my husband's paddles meet his double's paddles, the mottled cliffs doubling themselves too, a second sky floating between our kayaks. We pass the Bohemian Grove property, waving to the guard keeping lonely vigil over cliffs my husband's feet have climbed on more than one occasion over the years, off-season, for that spectacular plummet into the river.

Following a mini-meltdown when I return to Coronado (homesickness, my Aunt Rose assures me), Mary Allen (who blogs at Harnessing Time) throws cards for me long distance and the reading—especially the Princess of Disks and The Queen of Swords--mirrors back some of the push/pull I feel returning to the blue sunlit skies of Coronado. 

We use the Thoth deck—which should really be referred to as the Crowley-Harris deck, since its artwork was created by Lady Frieda Harris—in the same way we see Pamela Waite’s name appearing in reference to the Rider deck. Most of the time, Mary and I use the Crowley-Harris deck, but refer often to the pictorial images of the Rider-Waite for a balanced synergy. I love that both decks exist due to male/female teams and feel the resulting artwork and imagery is stronger for the dual visions behind them.

I relate the Princess of Disks with her feet in the roots of the trees to my ever present love for the northern California redwoods. And the Queen of Swords, high on her blue throne in the clouds, to my new Coronado life. The queen is crowned by a child’s face, sword down low, pointing earthwards as she attempts to not only take advantage of her new aerial position but stay connected to what she learned in the woods…and in her right hand, a bearded mask. She’s unmasking. Which feels appropriate in a way as I head to Ghost Ranch to work with women bloggers, where we will write, make masks, and dialogue with the masks as a way to clarify blogging goals and focus.

In the meantime I’m delighted to learn that tarot garden sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle spent some years in San Diego, that if I rummage around maybe I can find the sculpture that supposedly graces the port of San Diego with its half male/half female face. Even as I miss the quiet green glades of my former acre of redwoods, in Coronado, it seems to me the sky remains perpetually bright and blue, the brash white of sailboat sails far below the Blue Bridge portioning out the harbor where by night my husband dives with his students. To the right lies the tiny rind of land where we live, and just beyond, the hills of Mexico...a new landscape, not yet fully explored. In time, I will undoubtedly love it as much as the woods.

Additional notes:

For a lovely post about tarot and writing exercises, including one we did on the Sea Ranch retreat, see Barbara Ann Yoder’s blog post, Writing The Star.

See Notecard to a Nursing Mother: Get thee to a Sculpture Garden...with Baby for a closer look at that trip to poetry house with my seventh month old on hip (hosted at Mother Writer Mentor). We are ever questing for posts by other mother poets, mother writers, father writers too, on all aspects of parenting and writing.

Lemonade Stands, Retreats, and Writers and Lovers Cafe

The very last week before summer vacation, my youngest took off his training wheels and we started biking together along the harbor ten minutes to school, fifteen if I let him swerve the yellows of the path's divider line (barring oncoming riders). My heart breaks, yet soars with him: he can go wherever his legs will take him, fast and furious away from me into the sandy dunes where the jackrabbits bound away from his silver spinning spokes, their dual pale pink bunny ears laced with those arterial red lines like freeways marked on the old fashioned paper maps we used to use.

Another first this week: a lemonade stand undertaken with his friend who lives down the block. Us mothers sailed towards one another with our plates of cookies, mine, peanut butter, hers, oatmeal raisin, to the tiny folding table with its fresh squeezed pitcher of lemonade, two folding chairs, a long pocket of change taped secure along the back border of the table cloth. Then, all too soon for me (when did I get this prone to tearing up?!) after the admonition about counting change, the other mom winks at me, the cue to slip away to let them run the show.

When I return an hour later, just the dregs of lemonade swill below the spigot, nearly impossible to drain into a cup, the folding chairs empty, sprigs of lavendar and purple daises flying, the boys wrestling on the corner lawn behind their stand. They spy me, straighten their shirts, caps, and race back to their chairs as my husband rides up on his bicycle from work just in time to buy the last cup and second-to-last cookie.

Other news, poetry news: I snuck away for a modest mini retreat with nine fabulous women last month, waking to group writing exercises, breakfast littered with conversations about words, stories, places to send work, drafts in progress, u-turns, left turns, and the profound swervings of writing together in the present moment. Which lead me away from blogging and back to writing poetry, salved by walks along the ocean, a bobcat the size of the heftiest of my former feral cats yawning on the front lawn, a buck with a full velvet rack. And the nightly walk between the three houses supernally black to the soft lull of one more conversation and a shared flashlight, the radiance of stars over us.

This net of like-minded women, their warmth, support and mirroring, prompted me also to send work out again, which means a haibun is forthcoming from Writers and Lovers Café (Fall 2013). The editor/poet/writer behind Writers and Lovers Café  is Tad Wojnicki (along with haiku poet Iyja J. Cabrera). Wojnicki also formerly ran Haiku Pix where I first came across his How to Ginko series of articles that contain beautiful illustrations and ideas for how to write haiku (check out the latest one, The Technique of the Opposites, and be sure to scroll down to also read The Zoom Lens Technique). 

And thanks is also due to Liz Brennan for introducing me, not only to Haiku Pix, etc., but to the haibun form in one of her online Nature Writing Classes.  She's currently teaching a poetry writing workshop titled Animals Make Us Human for Story Circle Network. Liz and I have also managed to stay busy collaborating at her ongoing prose poetry site, Perhaps, Maybe. Here are the links to the latest collaborations and their first lines (and remember to join her with a perhaps or a maybe of your own if you wish). To summer! And words, blessed words....

Your Child

Perhaps your child meant at first to come through my body...

Revision

Perhaps as a writer the desire to tell the truth haunts you, as it should, yet at the same time all past events over which you previously had no control are at last subject to your decisions, your revisions...

The Guest

Perhaps the body in sleep unburdens its flock of questions, like so many winged sirens, into the sky of dream...

Forever New

 Perhaps nothing is worth as much as what may replace it, when any given thing is only the first in a series of increasingly better things...

Photo credits:

Artwork on cover of my journal is by Paloma Estrada--I cut and paste her beautiful image of lanterns to my temporary notebook (from a brochure for the Coronado School of Arts) that I took to the Sea Ranch retreat where I fell in love not only with my retreat companions, but the sun, windchimes, cherries, hot tea, and birds nesting under the eaves.

 

A Modest Bouquet: Ten Mother’s Day Posts

Here is an image of a flower’s flower, replete with “sinuous rills” to borrow from Coleridge (Kubla Khan). We all get to be Georgia in front of a flower, inhabiting her eye for a fractionally inspired several seconds, to the tune of Stein’s refrain “a rose is a rose is a rose” circling, just as the words circled the ceiling over Stein’s bed (Alice’s idea, according to Rebecca Mark in the introduction to Lifting Belly).

Last week I wrote about the almost-flowers of Harry Cooke’s illustrations for Poe’s tales. There’s no question about the authenticity of this flower blossoming in my tiny garden by the sea. I’m stunned by it’s veined folds, inner reds, heartlit golds. Its dream chamber unfolding itself, enfolding anyone pausing long enough to see, and take, the invitation. Remember having time to ask before sleep, a question, a dream to incubate?

I want there to be that kind of time again. But I’m allowing my already three-real-time-children divided soul to be further divided by three websites I love and can’t stop nurturing (the new one at Transformative Blogging, last year’s addition, Mother, Writer, Mentor, and my first web baby here, Feral Mom). This Mother’s Day I decided to celebrate--hope you'll indulge me--by posting early, and then taking it easy…not rushing to create a new post, but stopping instead to walk back into some of the rooms of the past. Here are ten excerpts with links to the rest of the posts that circle either Mother’s Day or aspects of motherhood from solo parenting to a letter written by my own mother to mom vs. dad styles of parenting. Blessings and love to my own mother. And to mothers everywhere.

Mother’s Day

The man next to us caring for three kids by himself gave my husband a smug look when I got up to go the bathroom and someone at a neighboring table told my husband, “Hey, you’re supposed to take the kids out and let the wife go do her own thing, like this guy here.”…Read Mother's Day here.

Mothers and Daughters: A Bird’s Eye View

… Now, forty years later, I stand in the electrified field of my own kitchen: raising a daughter. She stomps before me, enraged with me for saying no to an overnight with a family I have only just recently come to know. I could easily spend her childhood lamenting how odd to find her so deeply wrapped around my heart, embedded in my subconscious, how uncomfortable to feel her groping around in there for the edges of her own self, unable to accept the simple yes or no answers my sons tend to accept…Read Mothers and Daughters here.

On Sons and Guns

… I still ask how we walked into that farmhouse without picking up on the boy’s charged, residual field of absolute panic. Back then, I had no reference for the burden of sons—what they might or might not do by accident…Read more of Sons and Guns here.

Some Mother: Abalone vs. Coffee

…Saturday morning…and I’ve believed my husband’s line that some other diver plans to meet him to brave the 19-plus swell he’s bent on surviving in order to nab three abalone. Despite a raging desire to meet a friend alone for coffee during this rare window when my husband’s home and thus can cover our brood for me, my mother’s intuition perks up when he says casually, “Of course I’m still diving and I’m sure some mother will watch the kids on shore.”…Read  more of Some Mother: Abalone vs. Coffee here.

In my writing cabin

...a photo of our daughter sits next to the printer. She wears a red velvet dress, holds a peach rose, each petal fringed crimson. She’s leaned against the white marble statue of a hand, so large that the palm’s lifeline curves past her shoulders and she is cupped, the hand extending still three feet above her head…Read more of In My Writing Cabin here.

Alice in Flames: Going Back to Work after Ten Years at Home:

…Against the pitch black sky stands a young terrified girl, shaking as I hand her a glass of water and my telephone. I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden I was in the ditch. I make her a cup of tea, wrap a scarf around my neck, follow her out into the cold and dense tree-canopy dark, my Boy Scout son bursting out in front of us, his swiss-army knife flashlight illuminating the gravel, and 100 yards further, her car, one wheel lodged into the right bank…Read more of Alice in Flames here.

Lessons from the Body: Paper Boats, Poison Oak and Kites

… I floated in liquid state, trying to let go and hold fast, to descend but not disappear, to allow but not relent, to release but not evaporate, to ground but not split, to center but not centrifugally, to calm, to cry, on the far side of my husband’s business trip. When he’s gone, we fill the hours, as all solo mothers do, with joy, with sparring, in equal measure…Read more of  Lessons From the Body here.

A Summer Solstice Promise

…I bark the admonition about non-retrievable body parts to my son for the third time as we course in a four-door car over the blue bridge into Coronado, his elbow and hand buffeted by the air current inches from the concrete dividers. I’m thinking about an article I read on the airplane the day before about some kind soul in China employed solely to out-sprint prospective suicides as they scale a bridge probably about this height…Read more of A Summer Solstice Promise here.

I feel mediocre trying to do it all

“Rather than fighting the situation,” (of trying to find uninterrupted writing time), “Ehret says she ‘embraced the aesthetic of interruption,’ as a way of mirroring her reality and honoring the fragmentation common to women’s lives” (Bart Schneider’s 10/22/08 Lit Life column). I embraced her philosophy all of Halloween, putting my thoughts about which poems to send Margie’s Strong Medicine Awards on hold until after the kindergarten celebration—when Grandpa and Grandma would take the three children home for the afternoon…Read more of I feel mediocre here.

Rejection, Rhino Ends, and Rapunzels

There were lots of children in the neighborhood because it was an Irish Catholic town, so just on our small block there were 10 children in our family, six in the Kelly's across the street, five in the Clark's eight in the Jenny's and three in the Keating's. Everyone watched out for everyone else, and everyone knew each other. We lived on the edge of town, with a dairy farm just across the street. The traffic on the street was so slight. I remember falling asleep at night and hearing the whistle of the train in the distance...Read more of Rejection, Rhino Ends, and Rapunzels here. (Excerpt from a letter written by my mother, Mary Doherty).

Happy Mother's Day...and I'd love you to add a link in my comments to your favorite mother's day post that you've either written or come across--share the wealth.

Further Reading:

Notecard to a Nursing Mother: It's Never Too Late to Have a Happy Motherhood
I wrote this post last week for Mother, Writer, Mentor. It mentions a timeline of motherhood exercise I hope you'll take me up trying-- take a moment in your journal (ask for a new one!) to celebrate all you've given to your children. Breakfast in bed, flowers, and those precious drawings from the little people are always wonderful... But a little bit of self love goes a long way. Toot your horn in that journal! No one else has to know!

Photograph credits: Photos 1 and 2 (Rose, Butterfly and Collage) are mine, but the boots and Alice are from Robyn Beattie.

Almost-Flowers, Celestial Aspirations and This Morning’s Descent into Poe: The Color of Lightning

The art that excites me the most has always had both a railing and wild river in it... Timothy Donnelly, March/April APR, 2012

Back in January when Elizabeth sent me her half of The Color of Lightning (see our latest recording here—the first we had to do remotely, not side by side in her yard or my woods) the prospector in her poem crying “Eureka,” inspired some general rummaging before I wrote my half. I discovered Asteroid 5621 (co-orbital with Mars) bears the name. And came across something of Edgar Allan Poe’s I’d never read titled, Eureka, A Prose Poem, which it turns out, is anything but a poem. But how clever of Poe to dodge scientific critique by calling his treatise on gravity a poem. I also like his dedication, which reads in part, “…to those who feel rather than to those who think -- to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities…”

Out of the blue (without knowing I was writing about Poe), my brother visited several weeks later with a copy of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination under his arm, which he left as a gift for me. The illustrations are Harry Clarke’s (scroll down to the eleventh image here on 50 Watts to view the image I'll be discussing below; thanks to Maria Popova of Brain Pickings for the reference).

I love Clarke’s illustration for Descent into the Maelstrom which confronts us with a funnel of delicately layered Morse Code reminiscent lines mixed with repeating blurred comet tails and long dashes and dots of white in tightening rings. But even as the rings choke inward, the amount of black space the artist employs between rings grows. You immediately assign the location to the sea because of the vessel circling midway down the vortex, deck nearly parallel to the opposite side of the funnel. You (viewer) find no rim of sky; you are placed at the outer rings of the gyre looking at a slight angle down at the funnel whose tip you are not allowed to see (thus the secret fathoming of its genesis or end made worse, left to root in the imagination’s darker surmisings).

Once you stop thinking about that boat on its side spinning towards oblivion, you notice odd fragments of flotsam, wood, torn trees, or are they limbs of trees? Or worse? Then you realize one of those random bits forms a barrel, and to that barrel clings a survivor. Which ends up feeling more ominous than the image of the boat (though…check out the boat again…as you peer more closely it seems to house a human foot...and the back part of the deck appears fringed with human teeth, lower portion of a jaw, the boat the shape of a mouth opening in protest).

Flipping through the rest of the illustrations, I find the combination of ornate almost-flowers and detailed pattern that really otherwise should add up to ornament coupled with the sometimes gruesomely extending limbs and body proportions effectively betray the warp of psychological states Poe puts his readers through time after time. Clarke’s drawings match Poe’s methodical haunting, the way Poe rings you with words and portions of argument that should add up to reason but tilt towards madness.  The words chosen to describe Descent into the Maelstrom’s illustration reads: “The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic…upon the interior surface of a funnel…”

Initially the image felt familiar—I first identified as the boat trying to maintain position…boat of motherhood, boat of personhood, boat of poet trying to stay afloat. But once I saw the person clinging to the barrel, the lonely boat felt far less romantic in the light of this second image with its graver degree of depravity and desperation.

Weighing the emotion rings of each image (empty boat vs. barrel clinging survivor), I turned to a back issue of APR I found unpacking this weekend (in a stack of other reading material I was supposed to return to Elizabeth before we moved). In a conversation in APR’s March April 2012 Issue, Why Write If Not to Align Yourself with Time and Space with Mathew Zapruder, Ange Mlinko, Timothy Donnelly, Steve Almond, and Hannah Gamble, a couple of paragraphs by Timothy Donnelly moved me. In speaking of the sublime, the experience of it, how the relative safety of the observer (reader) figures, he left me with another useful visual:   “…The difference is that between terror and horror. It’s leaning over the railing at Niagara Falls versus actually falling in… The art that excites me the most has always had both a railing and wild river in it…” You need to read the whole conversation to appreciate all the nuances (I hope you will). Donnelly follows this by rooting for taking risks in writing, going the distance.

Been a long time since I felt that excited about writing poetry again, about reaching for the curve past the curve. I am thinking of the opposite vortex of terror Descent into the Maelstrom implies—is it possible for our generation of poets to write poems that spiral with equal height celestially, hope-driven, not sappy, not trite, not “angel-fied”, but where body meets potential of spirit.

Likely these poems already exist, so tell me your favorite. I’m feeling restless with my own tired orbit, spiraling on the updraft of others with brighter vision, thrilled for example with the birdsong and the rainbow hammock behind Elizabeth, the cheerful lilt of her voice in this week's recording. I’ll be recording my next half of poem outside near the birds of paradise, hoping too to catch the trills of the yellow warblers I hear right now and every morning when I wake.

End Notes:

Email Elizabeth if you want to join in her collaborative prose poetry blog, Perhaps, Maybe. You can send her a Perhaps or write a Maybe to one of her Perhaps stanzas. It will grow on you…I promise…

For images reminiscent of Clarke’s, but definitely aligned with a sweeter strain of music (enchanting, an antidote for me to the darker Clarke depictions) check out Kay Nielsen’s work. See Maria Popova’s Kay Nielsen’s Stunning 1914 Scandinavian Fairytale Illustrations.

 Photograph is cover of Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe with Illustrations by Harry Clarke; published by Calla Editions in 2008 (unabridged republication of an edition originally published by Tudor Publishing Co., New York, 1933). Twenty-nine tales, with illustrations (Eureka, A Prose Poem does not appear in the collection).

 

Marriage’s Lineage of Imagery and The Poetry of Motherhood

I wrote this post last year, but due to the surreal anguish and ongoing questions (would we be ok? would we be reunited?) I waited. In synchronous harmony, I am preparing to teach Poetry of Motherhood again, but this time, selecting poems from the sun-filled home I inhabit with my husband.

When my husband-to-be flew out to Iowa City to woo me thirteen years ago with all the muscled vigor of a grown man—certainly no longer looking anything like the freckled kid I remembered from sixth grade—and asked me to marry him, his eye was caught by an image on my shelf of Guinevere knighting Lancelot (artwork by Edmund Blair Leighton). That, he proclaimed, should be our theme. 

So we hired a dress-maker; she skillfully replicated the long draping sleeves of Guinevere’s gown, sketched out and sewed to red pigskin the black griffin-like bird of Lancelot’s heraldry to my husband’s tunic. I remember sort of glossing over the metaphor of the entangled love triangle between Guinevere and Lancelot and Arthur, choosing to focus on the parallel spiritual solace Guin and Lance may have found in the later years of their acquaintance.

Our wedding guests arrived adorned in period costume. We hired a harpist who by chance could also fulfill my husband’s request for closing processional by bagpipe; under the canopy of redwoods, we married in a stone amphitheater to the low sweet trill of a hermit thrush. We filled our years with children and jobs and the stresses of our economic times, which lead to my husband taking a second job in a city a flight’s distance from us.

 After two years of the inevitable strain our situation placed on our marriage we found ourselves facing a crisis of trust. I feared irreparable damage. Wriggling under the clarifying purification pain provides, I farmed out my three children and stayed with my aunt in an attempt to gain perspective. Simultaneously, I happened to be on the hunt for poems to use in my Poetry of Motherhood class, grateful for the distraction work lent from the psychic sorting obsessing both heart and head. Tea in hand, from across the room, I spotted the pale green spine of a book titled, “Ireland in Poetry.”

When I slid the book free, I found two familiar figures gracing the cover. In slightly different costume (her dress, blue--not white, his head, covered in chain mail--not bared), but so close to the image we’d used on our wedding invitation, I felt as if the figures were speaking directly to me: All is not lost. But you are, for now, turned away from one another. What relief—I could acceptance our distance. And take comfort in the image of gripped dress sleeve linking the forlorn lovers. Later that night, a poet friend of mine said: Why don’t you advise your husband to forgive himself, and you, do the same: forgive yourself. She was hinting at two equally important halves of forgiveness: forgiving the other person matters little if self-blame runs riot in the background of one's inner monologue.

While my husband and I still had hours of emotional thicket to clear, both the image and the suggestions from my friend (which I voiced to my husband) seemed solid reminders of possible redemption. Another friend chimed in with: The only way through perceived betrayal is through…through the physical grip on the body, through the triggered childhood griefs that attach likes boxcars to the engine of one’s particular train. At least the caboose, vibrant red, has room for two to stand viewing side by side the ground crossed to get here, retreating, retreating.

Notes and further reading:

Book cover: Ireland in Poetry, Edited by Charles Sullivan. Cover image, "The Meeting on the Turret Stairs," by Sir Frederick Burton, 1864. Watercolor on paper. The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

A beautiful collection of poems; for Poetry of Motherhood, I chose for my students, the poem Cliona, by Catherine Twomey, a mother daughter poem graced by the opening lines , "You are letting her go / from you slowly / so gently she hardly / knows."

A plea for compassion for new fathers: Notecard to a Nursing Mother: Let The Husband Be Where He Is (a follow-up to Postcard to a Nursing Mother: Be Where You Are) at Mother Writer Mentor, where I'll be teaching Poetry of Motherhood.

Hope you'll join me for Poetry of Motherhood (April 22). Check out this video I made last year with my daughter's help out on our back deck in the redwoods, "Introduction to Poetry of Motherhood" for a better idea of our class. Also know we aren't strictly in the business of writing poetry. We write to prompts and while poetry is welcome, it isn't required. We had a great time last year.

For a look at the quandaries and intricacies of blogging about the personal and traversing the public/private line, see an interview Edith O'Nuallain (yes, of Ireland) conducted with me earlier this month (posted in two installments): On the Art and Craft of Transformative Blogging and Part 2.