First Book Anxieties and Remedies: Suncatchers, Poetry Umbrellas and Butterfly Doors

"There is no single location of miracle..."

 Mark Doty, My Alexandria, from the poem Advent Calendars

Let’s say the sun were made of words. And the poet in the direct line of its transmission. So she spends her life spinning words back out in a carousel of patterns across a hardwood floor…a halo of fractal replicas of her many angles sliding like minnows across bare feet. Raveling the light/words into discrete units of color…dually winnowing and amplifying. 

I aspire to be a suncatcher, though sometimes I feel more like a shadowcaster. I realized this when I went through my own poems looking for a “sunny” poem for Nicelle Davis who has offered to paint poems across umbrellas she will give away at AWP, Seattle 2014 (send her a poem for the Living Poetry Project’s RAIN). Though she didn’t specify what kind of poem she wanted, I sent her a darkly celebratory marriage poem, The Painter’s Wife, only because it mentions rain. 

Then some other self in me perked up and decided a sunny poem might be “nice,” and you can guess the rest, I started the tallying of dark vs. light poems…until an hour later...I implored my husband and the Husky to rescue me for coffee. (My husband, reading over my shoulder, says I should drop words like fractal, raveling. But I play to stay sane on this personal blog in a way I don’t on other sites. So weigh in: can you stand lead-ins with metaphors? Even long-winded, mixed ones?)

On the upside, all this talk of rain made me miss the Midwestern storms of Iowa City where one can count on a righteous soaking while riding a bicycle home from work, raindrops as firm and as thick as a melon scooper’s chilled butter balls. To say nothing of the lightning, no simple jag, threading instead with multiple tendrils multiple banks of clouds, outdone only by the thunder, rolling, growing momentum, to land on the roof of one’s heart. I'm hoping one of these summers to return to either partake as a student and/or teacher at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Since last posting I’ve made more than one trip to Balboa Gardens, fallen in love with the lily pond and the shady relief of the botanical gardens where the redwood lath creates a lattice of shade where constellations of leopard plants reign, their pale spots more like stars fallen straight from the Milky Way. Found new saints to research at The Timken Art Museum and stood in awe in front of Rembrandt’s St. Bartholomew (taking the docent’s cue to discern the signature dimly present beside St. Bartholomew’s face). Ate lunch in the sculpture garden with Aunt Rose and stood beneath the elephantine roots of the trees gracing the tiny amphitheater where three butterfly doors announce the existence of Zoro Garden (named after Zorine, the "queen of the nudist colony's pageant" formerly hosted on this site during the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition according to Balboa Park's website). 

What I love about these butterfly doors is that each depicts the butterfly and the cocoon perched on corresponding plant of choice. That the doors are closed, set as they are up a tiny flight of stairs and embedded in the hillside. What lies behind them? Who gets to go through? Are you watching? Are you next?

Lately, with the forthcoming publication of my first poetry collection (November Butterfly, Saddle Road Press, 2014) I feel dogged by the Emperor's New Clothes syndrome, akin to the shadowcaster fears discussed above. Or to use a metaphor from the tattoo artist world, "my canvas is in a bit of pain"...suffering a projected anxiousness about exposure. One thing to write quietly and share one poem at a time here and there. Another to shift psyche to grow into a self with a book on its way.

But the storm is mostly in my head; when I open my eyes, I see what I need to see to keep going. Nicelle Davis (umbrella girl), fearless luminary, gives me courage and inspires me to take risks in my work; especially via her latest poetry collection from Red Hen Press, Becoming Judas. The title metaphor creates an amazing stage for what she'll explore in an eclectic weave of prose poem, Biblical reference, song and image play, poems juxtaposed with illustrations by Cheryl Gross. I was not only fascinated by her way of confessing assumptions while defining her childhood's constructed faith, but moved by how far she takes us in to her relationship to faith's veerings and the mother/daughter nexus of lifelong bonding and individuation.

Just for context on defining constructed faith, here's a couple lines from her poem Disclaimer: Assumptions Made By This Homemade Religion: "I mistook the pastel picture/ of Jesus hung in every home for John Lennon. Both/ called the Prince of Peace." As I read the collection, questions burgeoned, and I put on my Mother Writer Mentor hat and asked Nicelle, what is it like to write poems about one's mother? To reveal and honor the depth of that connection, as evidenced by lines that ignite the imagination of the reader: "[My mother is the one] who put me in this blue dress lit on fire..."


In return we received much more than a guest post from Nicelle; I'd call it a prose aubade for her mother, No Love is Singular: Confessions of a Poet Daughter accompanied generously by photographs and two poems from Becoming Judas. I took comfort in not only her poems, but her words about the process of reckoning with having written those poems: 

Yes, [my mother is] "the one who put me in this blue dress lit on fire,” but there would be nothing without fire to burn new ground, to open the potential found in a fallen seed. 

I wrote my mother into a book to tell her she is my fire, but this has and will be read wrong. Fine. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. We can’t get it right—I’ll never be good—but there is potential in every effort. Fire and love are interchangeable verbs." 

I love Nicelle's reminder here about the powerlessness writers face when allowing work to go out into the world. When it enters the public domain, public questions arise. I asked her mine. But that risk and that bravery she exhibits in putting both work and process reflections out there affords other writers a measure of strength, a nod, a "come along" if you will. 

Another process boon for the anxious writing self comes via Barbara Ann Yoder's book I had the privilege to read in draft form. She defines her forthcoming book as a "guide to overcoming self-censorship." Here's a link to the page where she offers excerpts full of exercises: A Breakthrough Book for Women Writers. Or jump straight to one of the excerpts here, Writing With Courage, in which you are asked to write a fairytale about yourself and your writing life.

And my other combative strategy isn't really a strategy, it's just where the joy is: creating new work. Here are links and teaser first lines to the latest Perhaps Maybe collaborations. Liz Brennan is ready for more collaborators, so please send her a prose Perhaps to which she'll craft a Maybe or maybe she'll send it to me, or perhaps you and a friend could team up and write your own pairing and send it to her. This first treads the line between humor and possibility from the threshold of witnessing a daughter on the verge of puberty (the possible boys of her future already talking later in the poem through metaphors of tree): 
 
 Text of Metaphors: Perhaps when my daughter orders me to stop using metaphors (You're not off the hook. Don't ride me. Give up the goat) she secretly likes it. I can't stop anyway...

 Video recording of us reading Simply Poems (a reading with a breeze):  Perhaps until a spot more fertile for the flower is found, its pale shade stands as a reminder of what must come. Because leaves understand the inevitable, do we need to be told?  

This one turns on a powerful short story by Isaac Asimov, written in 1956, that has astounding relevancy for our technologically dependent and saturated state of being. Should we rely on people or machines when we use up our planet's resources? Neither? Both?  Here's Asimov's Last Question and here's how Liz started us off down our own line of questioning:

Text of The Last Question:  Perhaps while we can’t yet turn smoke and ash back into a tree, we can

train impossibly shattered things to mend themselves: a crushed hope, a fractured trust – an anguish suspended in a dream...

Which in turn inspired a miniscule debate about entropy. Maybe love is the opposite of entropy, but for this perhaps maybe, we settled on light: 

Text of Light: Perhaps light is the opposite of entropy, travelling at a speed hummingbirds match in nectared dreams of planets without kestrels...   

Further reading:Cathe Shubert, another AROHO find, offers an infusion of poetry goodwill here; she argues why poetry matters... in an essay she wrote last summer at Breadloaf: In Praise of a Poetry of Action.

October 10 addition: Just came across this beautiful process post by Marilyn Bousquin in which she addresses the ways men and women react to rejection in  On Shameless Self-promotion: Keep Hitting the Send Button; she takes apart the concept of shameless self-promotion by looking at the role of shame in women's writing lives.

Photos: are mine with exception of the cover for Becoming Judas; the stained glass mermaid above is the artwork of stained glass artist Rebecca Lichau out of Sonoma County.

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.