Artwork by Tania Pryputniewicz |
I
could use an angel right now; how about you? I lost my mother in
January and I’ve been two months blessed with caring for her with my siblings
and four months grieving after her passing. As is always the case during times
of intense sorrow, through the tears, many miracles, much beauty. Like this drawing of the angel I did last year for a friend of mine before I knew the cancer was returning, maybe in some kind of instinctive premonition that the ceiling of heaven was coming down a little closer than usual.
If
you, like me, are feeling pulled heavenward lately and would like to explore
your relationship to angels in writing, join me. I’m eager to get back to my
teaching and my life as a writer. It’s just how I function, how I heal, and how
I grow. I’d love to work with you.
Here’s what I put together for next month:
Here’s what I put together for next month:
Writing
Our Angels
Have
you ever wrestled with angels? Named an angel? Loved or raged in the absence or
presence of an angel? Whether you believe in angels or not, you will find them
throughout literature, from Blake’s time to our time in poems like, “Questions
About Angels” by Billy Collins and “What the Angels Left” by Marie Howe and “For
Each of You” by Audre Lorde and “The Angels" by Fanny Howe: I met them / in the
Fields of Mourning.
What
do angels give us? Are they to be revered in all their Hallmark glory? Or
should we, as Linda Pastan writes in “Angels,” be weary of them? I am tired of
their milky robes, / their star-infested sashes.
Whether
you’ve had your own encounters with angels or have longed dreamed of meeting
your guardian angel or have a question or complaint to lodge with a particular
angel, come write with us as we examine our assumptions about angels and look
at angel poems together. You’ll come away from our class with reveries and
poems towards the creation of a personal Book of Angels.
All
levels of writing welcome; class structure includes weekly prompts and video
calls in a loving and supportive virtual classroom environment. We start *note new start date to allow time for enrollment: beginning of this month on Monday, May 7 and run six weeks through Friday,
June 15. Cost for the six-week session is $350. Please contact me for more
information through the contact form on this website (use the link under my photo, which is accessed by clicking on my full name).
Snow in the morning garden! |
My
husband the Angel…
…gifted me a trip to Denmark when he heard I was losing
my mother. In March, I flew to visit the beautiful host family I lived with as an exchange student when I was just eighteen years old. What a blessing to fall into the arms of my host sisters and host brother and my host mother and to fill in the narrative of the years apart. To sleep in the same house I slept in so many years ago, to wake to the kinship of loving voices, to peruse the home's artwork, to discover the Danish artist, Ovartaci. And to fall in love with of course, the colorful wings of his butterfly woman hanging in the hallway outside my bedroom and the pale blue floating figures and their equally pale blue mystical horses pulling the chariot of his "Tankens flugt" (Thought's flight).
Thanks to poet Cindy Lynn Brown I joined the Odense Lyric 2018 Tech and Tekst poetry festival. I got the chance to hear several hours of Danish poetry and show three poetry movies. My Danish came back (enough) to introduce and read the corresponding poems from November Butterfly (in Danish). But this was largely thanks to Cindy's translations and my host sister Ulla Krogh Henriksen's coaching. Here's a sweet recording of Ulla reading Corridor for me:
The Key to the Future |
The Little Mermaid |
It
snowed while I stayed with Ulla in Copenhagen; we had a beautiful day walking
beside the waterway revisiting the Little Mermaid and discovering a fabulous
scrap metal figure titled, “The Key to the Future.” He sits on a giant silver
key overlooking the water in pensive pose, finger to forehead, reminiscent of
Rodin’s Thinker. I loved fantasizing about the key to the future, what the door
would look like, what massive lock might turn…what threshold we might cross,
what angel meet there.
Hospice Angels at Tarot for Two
My
tarot co-blogger and dear friend Mary Allen read cards for me several days
before I lost my mother in early January. By January’s end, with Mary on the
far end of the telephone in Iowa, I was able to write a bit about the long
goodbye and the hospice nurse my mother loved so much:
Photo by Robyn Beattie |
The day she decided to ask
for end of life meds, she named the rose Gabriella after her hospice nurse and
I cried with her as I pushed her in the wheelchair to the flower stand on the
corner where we could buy Gabriella a “thank you” rose as red as the one we’d
name after her and left alive in the garden.
Read
the rest of The Hanged
One here.
Mary
had travails of her own. She writes about the Two of Wands in relation to her
month here:
My first thought about the
two of wands is that in the Thoth deck it looks like bones—two bones crossing—even
a tiny bit like the shadowy broken bones in the x-rays of my shoulder…I read
online this morning that the two of wands is the card for partnerships, two
people working together successfully, and that makes sense to me in terms of
what’s been going on since I’ve had this broken, trying-to-heal shoulder.
Tania's Tarot Sketchbook |
Read
the rest of The
Two of Wands here.
Here's
my companion post to Mary's; I am still circling grief, and writing here about
the Ten of Swords and Four of Disks:
When Mary and I pulled cards
in January just two weeks after my mother died, I pulled the Ten of Swords, “Ruin”
with its image of ten sword handles ringing the periphery, points poised to
pierce a central heart, the main and thickest sword breaking apart. I didn’t
want that card for the month and tried a Mary tactic: I chose a second card. I’m
grateful Mary has taught me it’s ok to do so.
Read
the rest of The
Two of Wands, The Ten of Swords, and the Four of Disks here.
Poetry News
This
past weekend I made it out to read at the celebration for the Kowit prize, a
poetry prize bestowed by the San Diego Entertainment and Arts Guild and given
in honor of the late much-loved poet and writing teacher Steve Kowit. I am
honored to be one of a group of honorable mention honorees. I dedicated the
poem, “Moscow Road” to my mother.
Can
it really be the first poem I’ve ever written with the “f” word in it? (I
reference a phrase in one of the books my mother kept in the house when I was
growing up, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying.) I lost my nerve a
bit when I found out my husband couldn't accompany me to the reading,
but God bless my teenage daughter. She shook her pony-tailed head at me
and said, “Oh Mom, come on, just own it!”
And
so I did. Here’s a link to where you can submit your own poems (June 15-October 15) and order the San Diego Poetry Annual (or you can find a copy of it in the public and college libraries in San Diego ). This volume contains special sections:
Poems from Juvenile Hall, Poems by Veterans, Native Poets, and the Steve Kowit
Poetry Prize honorees.
I owe the following thank yous:
To the editors of San Pedro River Review and Blue Horse Press, Jeffrey and Tobi Alfier, for publishing "Silhouette" and "Strawberry Wine," in their Spring Music Themed Issue.
Founding editor of the Rockvale Review Sandy Coomer; "The Marriage Counselor Channels King Solomon" and "City Boys" are forthcoming in May.
Poetry editor Lindsay Wilson of The Meadow; "Stupid Californians" forthcoming this summer.
Editor in Chief Matthew Anderson of NILVX: A Book of Magic; "Tower" and "Fortune" linked haikus are forthcoming in Summer 2018 Tarot Series 2 issue.
I owe the following thank yous:
To the editors of San Pedro River Review and Blue Horse Press, Jeffrey and Tobi Alfier, for publishing "Silhouette" and "Strawberry Wine," in their Spring Music Themed Issue.
Founding editor of the Rockvale Review Sandy Coomer; "The Marriage Counselor Channels King Solomon" and "City Boys" are forthcoming in May.
Poetry editor Lindsay Wilson of The Meadow; "Stupid Californians" forthcoming this summer.
Editor in Chief Matthew Anderson of NILVX: A Book of Magic; "Tower" and "Fortune" linked haikus are forthcoming in Summer 2018 Tarot Series 2 issue.
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